All in Her Head
by quirky21
Summary: Rekha had been perfectly content with her life as an exosuit technician aboard the Aurora. A few friends, a few bedmates, a few credits saved up. She had a quiet, fulfilling life where no one knew her secrets. And then her ship exploded. f/f
1. Warning

A/N - Inspired by the Below Zero drop and the Subnautica fanfic _In Charge_, which is a fantastic story! I may have borrowed an idea or two, specifically the suit storage and airlocks. I like how their functions were described.

Summary: Rekha had been perfectly content with her life as an exosuit technician aboard the _Aurora_. A few friends, a few bedmates, a few credits saved up. She had a quiet, fulfilling life where no one knew her secrets. And then her ship exploded.

* * *

As far as crash landings on uncharted alien worlds went, this wasn't so bad. Sure, the flotation device on her escape pod hadn't deployed. Yes, the depths to which it had sunk were nerve wracking. And okay, the tiny pod and dark depths were making her feel rather claustrophobic. Other than that, things were fantastic.

Rekha was in great health, aside from a few burns and scrapes that she'd gotten while escaping the _Aurora_. She had a similarly healthy companion. Environmental controls were functioning at full capacity. Their escape pod's storage had enough food and water for a week plus raw materials for the fabricator to create essential items like reinforced dive suits and high capacity air tanks in case they had to evacuate before help arrived. The radio was sending out their distress call.

Rekha frowned at the lack of incoming transmissions. They'd been down here two days. Someone should have come to check on them by now. Was there an anomaly blocking radio waves? Intentional disruption? Had someone gone to war with Alterra and started with a science ship out in a far arm of the galaxy? Dumb way to start a war. Waste of resources. She frowned out the window into the inky waters. Her reflection frowned back.

"Ugh!" Harrington groaned from her drop seat. She waved her PDA at Rekha. "Dogar, any luck getting your PDA to unlock? I need something other than useless survival tips for entertainment."

Rekha looked at Dr. Alandris Harrington, senior medical officer and holo-novella junkie. "No. Company-issued PDAs won't unlock from survival mode until they reconnect with an Alterra AI." She'd attended enough safety briefings to know that.

"There's got to be a way."

"I'm a prawn technician not a programmer, Harrington."

"Ugh."

Not the complete truth. Rekha had a custom PDA stowed away that had several hacking programs she could use to reset Harrington's. She had a whole slew of skills that she didn't care to be publicly known. Spacecraft piloting, various forms of combat, interrogation, psionics…

She'd learned most of her not-on-file skills long before she'd bought herself a citizenship in Alterra. The last thing in the galaxy that she needed was people asking about her past. It'd take one hell of a dire situation to expose herself in any way.

Alterrans weren't famous for their understanding attitudes.

"Fine. I'm going to try and sleep. Pod, lower lights to ten percent." Harrington laid out on her dive suit, head propped on an arm.

Rekha's chronometer said it was only 2130. Not very late, but what else was there to do when trapped 328 meters below the surface? She looked back out the little window. As her eyes adjusted, the outside world made itself known. Glowing things flickered in the shadows between huge green orbs. She could sense life out there. Simple and alien, but life. And farther out, she could sense human life. Other survivors. There was a third of the ship's original compliment, yet most in the same or better circumstances than Rekha. Someone would come for them soon.

Harrington had them up and doing cardio exercises at 0700. Rekha grumbled even though she'd already been awake. She hadn't slept well. A nightmare about giant sea monsters had snapped her from sleep several hours before. The distinct feeling of unease kept her from going back to sleep. At least the exercise burned an hour.

They ate and drank and Rekha managed to catch an hour nap.

"Hey. Dogar." Harrington prodded her shoulder. "Did you hear that?"

She yawned and squinted. "What?"

There came the distant groaning songs of what they'd already guessed were whales of some sort.

"Not that. Listen."

She did. She listened until Harrington sighed and threw up her hands.

"Thought I heard…" Harrington didn't finish.

Around mid-afternoon, Rekha _felt_ what she thought Harrington might have heard. A massive presence that radiated predatory hunger. Not a minute later, the life pod vibrated with the force of its roar.

"That!" Harrington squeaked, immediately clamped a hand over her mouth. She manually dimmed the pod's light to five percent.

Twitchy with fright, they peered out into the gloom. Light flit among the green orbs. The roar sounded around them again. And again. Louder, closer, making Rekha glad she was already on her knees and pressing close to another human being.

They saw something slide through the darkness. Something big enough to reflect the green orbs' light and stretch the meters and meters between them. Their breaths came in strangled pants as they struggled to both breathe and make absolutely no noise that might attract that… thing.

Eventually the roars faded and stopped. Rekha remained trembling, would have for a while, except Harrington swore up a blue streak. "We have to get out of here!" She growled. "We have to."

Yes. Whatever it was, it'd be back. They were in its hunting grounds, and it would find them eventually. Even if it couldn't break their pod's plasteel skin, it was big enough to cause a lot of trouble. Roll the squishy humans around inside until someone's skull popped like a ripe melon. Destroy their radio. Push them to a depth that their pod couldn't handle. Keep them trapped inside the pod until they died of dehydration.

"As soon as I can feel my legs again. Then we'll go." Rekha whispered.

Harrington eyed her. "Yea. We probably shouldn't wait for it to come back."

The radio beeped with an incoming message that made them both jump and stare at the window. There wasn't an answering roar, not even ten minutes later. Rekha looked to Harrington, who glanced at the radio, then back at the window. She shook her head. Nope. They wouldn't be playing that message. Probably just another survivor distress signal finally making its way to them.

Alterra comms were the worst. It was a running joke among prawn technicians that if an exo-head sneezed inside their suit, their comms would go down. Instead of live comms to try and organize the survivors, they had to deal with limited distress messages and delayed incoming messages. One would think a corporation that had originally been a weapons manufacturer and distributor would have decent communication systems.

Rekha and Harrington pulled off their Alterra uniforms and squeezed their naked butts into the head to toe dive suits. Feet were stuffed into flippers, tanks hauled onto backs, heads crammed into masks. Harrington checked seals and gauges. Rekha tested the flexibility of her suit. Not bad. She wouldn't want to fight in it, but hopefully it worked like Alterra prawns instead of comms. It was supposed to protect from extremes in temperature and pressure, to reduce or completely negate the effects of decompression. Or maybe the tanks and mask did the decompression thing. Whichever. They should be fine making a quick ascent from the black depths.

She stuffed her clothes and share of the supplies into the dimensional pocket that her suit used as a storage system. The mass and weight wouldn't affect her. Same quantum mechanics as used on the prawn storage units, though decidedly smaller. Prawn suits did a lot of heavy mining. Their storage units could have much deeper d-pockets.

"Ready," was whispered. The sound couldn't have gone far past the mask over her face, but Harrington nodded. She finished manually typing the message that she wanted the radio to transmit and gave a thumbs up.

Harrington opened the overhead hatch. A stasis field kept the water from pouring in and pinning them to the pod's floor. Maybe that's how the dive suit functioned. With a stasis field? It had a tiny power supply, derived from kinetic energy and her own bio-electric field. Rekha shook off thoughts of physics and climbed the ladder. Despite the suit, she felt like she was climbing into cold honey.

Out of the lit safety of the pod, she felt the weight of the ocean pushing her down, crushing her with its merciless grip. Her eyes struggled to make out anything in the deep blackness. Only the strange floating bulbs and flitting creatures. Her breath stuttered.

Harrington grabbed Rekha's mask, made her look at Harrington's softly lit face. It grounded her. The claustrophobia receded, and Rekha's lungs found a normal rhythm. Her pulse slowed. Harrington nodded. She maneuvered them until their flippered feet were against the top of the pod. She held up a hand, three fingers, then two, then one. Together, they launched upwards. As Harrington had instructed earlier, Rekha paddled with her feet and slowly reached overhead to curl her arms down.

The depth gauge on her HUD changed achingly slow. How long had they been swimming? She wished they'd had enough materials to build a seaglide or two. She was exhausted and they still had a hundred meters to go! It was pitch black now. No luminescent bulbs or fishes to break up the monotony of oppressive nothingness. Without her gauges, she'd have no idea if she was swimming up or sideways or absolutely nowhere.

And it was starting to get cold. She hadn't noticed at first due to hot adrenaline and the suit's insulation. She was far from freezing, yet it made her wish for a sweater and fuzzy slippers. Maybe a cup of hot c-

_ROAR!_

Both women stopped dead. The roaring continued in terrifying spurts. Rekha felt a massive presence directly beneath them. Morbid curiosity had her touching its mind. It'd just found something new, something that gave off light and heat and might be food, so it was attacking.

Far below, she saw a flicker of light. Several breaths later, a flurry of bubbles raced upwards. Their life pod. The creature had _torn a hole in plasteel_! Harrington was already several meters in the lead before Rekha thought to frantically swim upwards. Angry roars spurred her on. A faint glow of light from above teased her.

The sun? Her chronometer said it was too early. Must be a moon. Wonder if…

_ROAR!_

She barely registered the presence speeding toward her when enormous claws grabbed her. Bubbles screamed from her as the claws dug into the suit.

"Let me go!" she screamed, both into her mask and into the monster's skull.

It shuddered and loosened its grip. Panic thrust her up, toward Harrington's retreating form and the wavering disc of light.

The monster howled beneath her.

She kicked desperately, knowing she wouldn't make it to the surface, let alone to some bastion of safety. Claws piercing her suit, then her skin, digging blindingly deep, made her shriek. Pain and terror seared along her nerves. She flailed wildly, bubbles everywhere, pain everywhere, wa-

A mind-numbing roar shut out the pain. She blinked into a double set of eyes illuminated a horrifying blue by her face mask, at the rows of hungry teeth beneath. The claws in her sides pulled her toward the open mouth.

No!

Absolutely, fucking _NO!_ Her entire core boiled into a single thought, "LET ME GO!" She threw it at the monster in a psychic scream.

It flinched, and the claws retreated. For a few seconds they stared at each other. Fury joined her maelstrom of emotions as the monster glared at her. How dare this thing try to eat her! How dare it try to end her life! It needed to hurt, like it had hurt her!

Another psionic blast lashed out, this one a combination of psychic _and _telekinetic force. It rippled through the water and crashed into the monster's head like plasteel into stone. What was probably blood escaped the creature's mouth. Over her pounding heart, she heard the monster whine. It blinked at her once more before coiling around and sluggishly swimming away.

Panting, she stared after it for long moments, ready to hurl another psionic attack. It didn't circle back. It didn't send out a predatory flare of thought.

Rekha decided that the creature was in full retreat and allowed herself to paddle to the surface. She gaped at what waited for her. Brilliantly red and orange, a gigantic moon dominated the night sky. Delicate clouds wafted across its face. Below them was a glowing monolith, shaped a little like a beetle. No. It was shaped like a…

A ship. The _Aurora_. It had to be. Her heart plummeted from its adrenaline high. Shit. The ship wasn't making a limping orbit around the planet like she'd hoped. It was nose-first in what must be a reef or shallows of a continent. Who knew when Alterra would bother sending another ship to investigate? Those assholes w-

Small and quick, a shadow darted across her vision. It veered to her right. Some sort of bird, and it disappeared into a bigger shadow. Rising from the waters, blacking out the field of stars, covered in luminescent plants, was land.

"Yes!" she cheered, slipped below the surface.

She kicked back up and splashed toward safety. It took a while to close the distance, then even longer to find a beach instead of sheer cliffs several meters high. Harrington was there, mask already pulled off, face a moonlit mix of exhaustion and terror. "Dogar? You're alive."

Rekha was too busy crawling up the sandy slope to respond. Pain made itself known. Pain around her torso and a splitting headache. She flopped to her butt and panted.

"You're bleeding." Harrington announced.

Was she? It hurt enough that she should be.

Instruments were already being pulled from a med kit. Harrington knelt and shone her PDA's light over the injuries. Oh yea. There was blood. A lot of it. "Any trouble breathing?"

Was her lung punctured? That had happened once. A prawn suit had collapsed on her, broken several of her ribs, one of which had gone right into her left lung. Now _that_ had been painful. "No."

"Good." Harrington nodded. "Let's get this gear off so I can patch you up." Mask and tanks were tugged off, the suit unzipped to expose Rekha's bare torso to the world. Harrington poked and prodded, made Rekha cry and whimper. "You're lucky. These aren't too deep."

Lucky. Rekha eyed the smoldering hulk of the _Aurora _in the distance. Sure. Lucky to be alive. Stinging dermal spray was applied, stopping the bleeding, sealing the wounds, and starting the process of repair. Bandages covered most of her torso by the time Harrington finished.

"Warning!" One of their PDAs chirped.

Adrenaline spiked and Rekha scurried backward from the water. What? What was-

"Endorphin levels low. Consider taking a seat and meditating. It may help to remember that problems exist only where you choose to see them."

Heartbeats pounded in her ears.

"When we get back, I'm going to write _several_ letters to upper management about this survival mode." Harrington grumbled.

Rekha slumped and winced at the pain of movement.

"No painkillers in the med kit. Guess they don't trust us to self-medicate. You should zip back into your suit. It might be warm and humid here, but with the exertion and blood loss, your body could use the support. You should also get something in your stomach." Harrington advised. She pulled out a nutrient bar from storage and broke it in half. "I'm going to start rationing." She glanced at their former ship. "Rescue might take a while."

All good ideas. Painful though. Rekha wheezed as she struggled into the sleeves of her suit, then exchanged flippers for ship shoes, every motion feeling like fiery knives arcing through her chest. Storage mercifully wasn't damaged. Food and water made it into her stomach. Her eyelids fluttered. She leaned against a rock and yawned.


	2. Curious Crabs

A/N - I've obviously taken some liberties with the lore. There's so much possibility with the history of war between the trans-govs! I really hope there's more about it in Below Zero.

* * *

Chapter 2  
Curious Crabs

Girlish screaming woke Rekha.

"Get away from me!"

She jumped up to find Harrington using a water bottle to fend off a four-legged crab the size of a dog.

In a single motion, Rekha grabbed a leg and swung the thing against a rock. It snickered at her. She shrieked and threw it into the ocean. White hot pain lanced through her ribs. She gasped, falling to her knees, touching her sides. A hand came away bloody. What?

"Y-You," Harrington stuttered, her expression wide and frightened. She panted. Her gaze went to Rekha's bloody hand, and her features softened. "You reopened your injury. Sit still. Put pressure on it."

Right. The monster from the deep that tried to eat her last night. Closing her eyes to hold back tears, she pressed down on the bleeding puncture, wishing for the painkillers that Alterra had decided weren't necessary survival items.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to deal with the crab like you did the leviathan?"

Her eyes shot open. The glare of the morning sun across the water made them flutter and squint.

"Or are you so used to hiding your psionic abilities that a physical response was your first reflex?"

Air rushed in and out of her mouth. She'd hoped Harrington had assumed Rekha was ultra lucky with her escape.

"Given that your psionic scream saved my life as well, I'm in no position to judge you, Dogar. I can't say that I feel particularly friendly toward you. I lost a lot of friends in the Grass Moon War." Harrington's tone dropped its friendly effort, dipping cold and low.

Rekha couldn't blame the older woman. Augmented Delhian soldiers had decimated the defending troops. She winced. What they hadn't massacred, they'd twisted and broken to act as _examples_ of Delhian superiority. "You aren't native Alterran either," blurted out. She gasped and looked up.

Harrington's lips were a thin line. "No. I'm Martian."

The government of Mars had been so utterly stomped on that Alterra had absorbed it and more or less finished wiping out its unique culture. That war had also been one of the major reasons for the Charter.

"I'm sorry." Rekha didn't know what else to say. The Grass Moon War had ended when she was an infant. Yet it was why her people were universally hated throughout the galaxy.

"How did you hide your genetic revisions?"

Bribes. Judicious alterations of government records. Rekha ran a hand over her face. "I came to Alterra because I didn't like the way things were done there. Look, I'll find my own corner of this planet to wait for rescue on. I won't bother you."

Harrington watched as Rekha got up, starting climbing up the steep embankment. Rekha was puffing at the pain within moments. Her foot slipped on a loose stone, and she cried out as she started falling back. A strong hand caught her.

"I think it's safer if we stick together, Dogar." Harrington stated. "If you were my enemy, you would've gotten rid of me instead of letting me know your secret." Confident, she met Rekha's eye. "Right?"

"Yes." Killing non-augmented people was easy. Though most sentients had a natural defense against psychic intrusion, few had training with it. Harrington might, given her age and origins. She may even have technological upgrades to it.

H-class psionics could breeze right past those defenses. Another reason that Rekha had left. Intruding on people's minds had always left her feeling dirty and unsettled. She wanted the sharing of thoughts to be a happy thing. She liked building and fixing things, not breaking them; hence her study of mechanical things and how to maintain them.

How to fix this problem? Her secret was out. Harrington would undoubtedly tell the authorities once they were rescued. Bribing officials would be expensive, far out of Rekha's price range. Her best bet would be to run and hide at the first opportunity. With as little bloodshed as possible.

They cleared the barren hill and burst into a jungle. Some of the trees were odd, bulbous, blunt things that barely cleared three meters and produced a milky sap that smelled vaguely sweet. Too bad they hadn't built a scanner before being evicted from their pod. Rekha would've liked to eat something other than chewy, offensively-lemony nutrient bars. There were traditional leafy trees, giant ferns, vines, grasses, fat purple cylinders, a dozen different flowers, and all manner of giant fungi. And of course, everything was luminescent, even in the daylight. At least one plant should be edible.

Unlike the ocean that teemed with animal life, the land boasted fish-like birds -birdfish?- and the giant crabs. That's it. Not even insects. It was the most bizarre experience to walk through dense jungle and not get a faceful of spiderweb or hear something buzzing in the ears. Nothing. Just the wind playing with leaves and the pungent scent of green. Was this an island?

There definitely weren't any humans nearby.

"Think anyone has discovered this?" Harrington wondered aloud.

Not anyone alive, was her reflexive thought.

Harrington glanced at her. She blinked, her face floating through a dozen emotions. "Can you," she swallowed. "Can you hear anyone?"

"No."

Despair pinched her features, giving them the lines that her age hadn't. "At all?"

"No! I mean, yes! There are others." Rekha gestured back the way they'd come. "But they're out there. I don't sense anyone up here at all."

Harrington sighed. "Can you tell how many?"

Rekha looked at the sunlight filtering through the green. It was easier to talk about her sixth sense without looking at the Martian. "I…" She closed her eyes completely, reached out, felt for the unique brightness that was human life. There'd been 53 the first day. Many of them had been weak, probably suffered fatal wounds given that yesterday's count was 35. A dozen were clustered in what she guessed was the _Aurora's _location. Most of the weak ones had been there. All the others were in ones and twos, lifepods. She finished her count. "Twenty-nine."

"So few," puffed from the doctor. She reached a hand to a tree for support.

_Aurora's _original compliment had been 148 plus 9 passengers, the Mongolian emissary and his retinue. Less than a quarter were alive. Colleagues and friends they'd been sailing with for 13 months, even longer for Harrington, who'd been on _Aurora _for years, was aiming for the chief medical officer position. All those people gone. Their ship a smoldering lump of wreckage.

Rekha yawned. She needed a decent night's sleep. Her wounds twinged. The beginnings of a headache pulsed. Painkillers would be good too. She found a nice patch of ground to sit on and yawned again.

"How far of a spread?" Harrington asked.

"Kilometers."

"You're H-class, aren't you?" Hushed awe, underlain with tight fear questioned her.

Rekha stiffened. "Several classes of psionics can sense life across vast distances, doctor."

"By the red gods, I felt the ripples of what you threw at that monster! Telekinesis is rare. Most can only lift a few kilos within a couple meters. Only a handful are strong enough to wield it as a weapon without the tech augments that the Charter forbids. Even fewer are also telepathic."

Wow. Harrington was incredibly well informed. Telepathy and telekinesis were generally incompatible skills. That was the purpose of the H-57 breeding program: to create weapons capable of using both. Children bred as weapons. Rekha frowned. She was lucky to have been born while abroad. Her parents had chosen to raise her outside of Delhi territories. Fifteen years as a human being instead of a weapon. Rekha had been taught to harness her power like any good Delhian, yet had also had the chance to play and explore, to _live_. Being forced into the military upon her parents' recall…

Rekha had started looking for a way to leave by the first night of boot camp.

"My sister would never believe this. An H-class not two meters from me, and my brain isn't leaking out my nose."

"I'm a person, not a fucking weapon class!" barked out of her. Her lungs heaved with her sudden, righteous anger. "I'm a person!"

Huge eyes stared at her. Terror had the irises as thin rings.

Tears blurred her vision. She blinked them away and got up. "I apologize for my outburst," hissed out of her. "I'm going to go explore."

The sun was high overhead when she realized that Harrington was following several meters behind. Rekha stopped. Her body ached, her stomach grumbled about lunch, and her heart beat a dull throb of loneliness in her chest. She found a place to sit and pull out sustenance.

Slowly, Harrington approached. She sat down. "Thought we agreed that staying together was safer around here."

A crab chose that moment to burst from the undergrowth, skittering toward Rekha. She batted it away with a thought. It crashed through the trees a dozen meters away. "Safer to stay with the biggest monster around?" was her angry sneer.

Harrington's gaze drifted back from where it'd followed the crab's airborne trajectory. Fear remained in them, yet it didn't emanate from her like it had earlier. "I have to admit, I'm starting to see the bright side of hanging around a revised person."

Rekha pursed her lips and turned her sight to the clouds starting to gather in the distance.

"You watch my back, I'll watch yours." Harrington said. "Otherwise these crabs will eat us in our sleep."

They probably would.

"Good enough, Dogar?"

She met Harrington's eye to say, "Good enough."

Talk was abandoned.

Metal glinting in the late afternoon sun had one of them breaking the silence to point it out. Exhaustion and pain momentarily forgotten, they ran up the incline and crested the hill to find a habitat.

An old, heavily damaged habitat that was half buried under a landslide.

"Piss."

Rekha did a quick mental sweep, in vague hope of her eyes' deception, yet the surrounding area was as devoid of human life as before. She sighed. "Maybe it'll still be good for shelter." The clouds she'd been watching all day were now a black mass on the horizon. What looked like a nasty storm couldn't be more than a few hours away.

"Maybe," hummed from Harrington. She skittered down the collapsed hillside. Rocks and birdfish jumped away.

Crabs came to investigate. Rekha threw them at one of the two peaks that dominated the landscape. Now in the small valley between them, she could see glass and metal at the top of each. Likely as abandoned as this facility.

"This must be what Emissary Khasar came looking for." Harrington said. "Has to be from the _Degasi _survivors."

_Degasi_? She remembered hearing about the Mongolians who'd crashed on some backwater planet a decade ago. It'd made the major news channels because the wealthy head of the Torgal clan and his heir were the ones who'd disappeared. Their skeletons were probably in this wreckage somewhere.

The original habitat design hadn't been large, unless there was a maze hidden under the landslide. It had once been two levels. Two basic tubular units for the upper, one of which looked like it'd been ripped off and tossed aside. What was left of the main level was an 'L' of two units attached to circular general purpose room. Rocks and dirt filled what little they could see through the windows of the big room. The hatch was off the 'L', and four crabs came skittering when Harrington made a mountain of noise yanking on the rusted thing. They joined their brethren on an airborne journey.

Harrington managed to bully the hatch enough for the two of them to squeeze inside and investigate by the light of their PDAs. Two more crabs had to be dealt with. Rekha yawned at the effort. She chose to let Harrington test the ladder and investigate whatever was up there. She returned after wrestling the ladder's hatch closed.

"Not much up there except shattered glass. Found a few ration bars in an old crate. They're Mongolian and a decade old, but edible." Two were offered to Rekha.

"Thanks."

Harrington nodded. "Let's see if we can get this hatch shut and finish blocking the corridor. We'll have a safe place to grab some shuteye."

They put on gloves to gather loose stones and wall up the corridor. As the shadows were starting to get long and the local foliage began to light up, they battled with rusted hinges. It was a losing battle. Rekha gave up first, her injuries screaming at the abuse. She walked around the base angrily until she nearly tripped over a half buried cargo box. A little digging had it revealing its jumbled contents.

Bottles and bottles of liquids, in various states of mostly empty. Bleach, hydrochloric acid, fertilizer -fertilizer? Had they started a farm? She peered into the growing dark, but shook her head. Tomorrow. What else was in here? Rolls of fiber mesh and rubber. More bottles of the same. Hand written label for lantern wine. Huh. It wasn't sealed and smelled awful. Too bad. Wine didn't last long unsealed. The last bottle was lubricant.

Hey, that could be useful.

"Harrington!" Bottle in hand, she made her way back to the hatch. "Maybe this will help."

The label was squinted at. "Red gods, I hope so." A brief struggle with the lid, and she splashed yellow slime on the hinges. She moved the door what little it would, splashed more. Same process on repeat for twenty minutes yielded excellent results. The hatch closed all the way and even locked in place.

The women shared relieved grins. Rolls of mesh and rubber were retrieved, then a small latrine pit was dug in the sand. Awful, yet better than doing her business over the open hatch of an escape pod. Thunder rumbled overhead. Rekha went to run inside. Harrington stayed, a thoughtful look on her face.

"Harrington." Rekha grumbled as lightning flashed. "We should get inside."  
"We don't know when it'll rain next."

So?

"We should try to collect water while we can."

"I've still got several liters." Rekha argued, her eyeballs aching with the need for sleep.

"Dogar, in case you haven't figured it out, we aren't getting off this planet any time soon. Even if the _Aurora _can fly again, it'll take weeks to repair the kind of damage that knocked it out of the sky to begin with. If it can't, well, you remember how long it took us to get here from the last phasegate. And we both know we aren't lucky enough for anyone else to be this far out from the shipping lanes."

Months. If only they'd gotten that phasegate up _before_ they'd wandered past this terrible planet. More thunder growled, streaks of lightning quickly following. "Okay, doctor. What about that crate I pulled the lube from?"

They emptied the crate, finished pulling it from the ground, angled the open side straight up, and did the same with another crate they found. Wind whipped across the landscape, nearly shoving Rekha off her feet, scattering the bottles, and giving them a taste of what might have caused the terrible damage to the habitat. Thunder cracked. Lightning flashed.

Harrington decided to shove the crates up against boulders and weigh them down with stones at their bottoms. Rekha captured what bottles she could and tossed them into the habitat.

Rain began to pelt their faces.

They had to yell to be heard over the storm and hold onto each other to keep from being blown away. It became abruptly quiet when the hatch closed behind them. Rain pounded the habitat, yet the multiple layer construction of the walls kept it from being a deafening roar.

Rekha wiped sodden hair from her face, took off squishy shoes and collapsed to the floor. At least she'd been wearing her dive suit the entire time. If the jungle hadn't been full of scratchy twigs and stabbing thorns, she would've switched into her ship uniform. The suit had been a nice protective barrier. Speaking of her suit, she pulled food and water from its storage. Harrington mentioning rations again had her stopping at half a bar. Her ravenous stomach objected, but it would be even unhappier getting nothing later.

"I think I saw some grow beds out there." Harrington yawned. "We can investigate what's growing in them tomorrow."

The prospect of actual food instead of gritty bar made her mouth water.

Harrington unfurled a couple rolls of rubber and mesh, made something like an actual bed. Another roll served as a pillow. She stretched out and moaned. "That's the stuff."

Rekha was left to create her own. She thought to walk that extra two meters around the corner for a breath of privacy. Sheer exhaustion had her getting horizontal as quickly as possible. Gingerly, she laid on her back, right next to Harrington. The doctor opened an eye for a moment.

"Good dreams, Harrington."

"You too, Dogar."

She let her eyes fall.


	3. Pain and Death

Chapter 3  
Pain and Death

Rekha woke from the oddest dream. She'd felt so old, so tired and immensely sad! It'd actually felt more like a telepathic sharing than a standard dream. That wasn't possible. Firstly, the chance of another Delhian among the crew of the _Aurora _was miniscule. Secondly, another Delhian would have felt Rekha's fight with the monster and contacted her by now.

"Stupid dreams."

She made to rise in the darkness. Every muscle protested. Her injuries objected. A headache added to the urge to go back to sleep.

Her bladder argued otherwise.

"Dammit."

"Morning to you too," muttered from beside her. Harrington huffed. "Is it even morning?"

"Chrono says it's 0530." Planet time. Her PDA had switched from ship time once it had an accurate reading of the sky.

Harrington shifted and sat up, her shape a vague shadow in the darkness. "Suppose I might as well get up. Alarm would go off in an hour normally."

Rekha opened her PDA for its soft glow and struggled to her knees. Sharp stabs of pain raced along her nerves. "Dammit."

"Pain?"

"Yes."

"I'll check your injuries after we unload. Hopefully those crates are holding water. We can wash up."

That sounded nice. She felt awfully crusty from the last few days. Had it only been three days since the crash? Wow.

Crabs waited on their proverbial doorstep. Rekha got rid of one with a groan. Her headache thundered. "Psi overload," she hissed at Harrington's questioning gaze. She hadn't worked her mental muscles in months. Suddenly doing the equivalent of throwing a prawn exosuit at that monster was too much.

A nod and Harrington found a tree branch to fend off the crustaceans with. They traded off while they unloaded their night's waste. Rekha sighed at the complete lack of privacy. Her suit's design forced her to be nearly naked to do her business. She couldn't go alone without being attacked by hungry fauna. Life on the _Aurora _had been pretty lacking in privacy as well. Four beds to a room. Shared hygiene facilities. Full messhalls and lounge rooms.

And yet, private shower and toilet stalls. A bed to herself. Earplugs to listen to music or drown out a neighbor's snores. Secrets kept to herself.

Old soldier that she was, Harrington immediately went to work. In the partial light of dawn, she found the crates full of water, used an empty bottle to make a cleaning solution with some bleach, scrubbed her hands, inspected Rekha's injuries, scrubbed those.

It was fine until Harrington got to the one that had split open for the second, third time. Shit that burned!

"Salt water already did a good job flushing your injuries, which is why I wasn't too worried about getting them clean yesterday. But with this one you keep aggravating..." She pulled out the mostly used med-kit, sprayed sealant on the injury. "Try not to do it again."

"Yes, doctor."

Bandages were applied. Sweaty dive suits were exchanged for ship uniforms. Both of their suits' interiors got wiped down with bleach water and hung to dry. Taking stock of the area became the next priority. A couple more crates were unearthed, their contents investigated. Broken stasis rifle, depleted batteries, empty bottles, and a discarded PDA were found. Over lunch, they downloaded the PDA's contents and browsed.

It contained logs from a _Degasi_ crewman until her apparent death and the young Bart Torgal acquired it, left a log describing how the crewman had struggled on despite her serious injuries, that she'd lived for three weeks longer than expected, that without her, they might not have found this island. A decent eulogy. Likely even better in its original language. The translation software provided by Alterra wasn't the best. Surprise, surprise. Rekha purposely didn't think about what Harrington might say for Rekha's eulogy.

They took a few minutes to absorb the fact that they were on an island. Not a continent. A tiny liferaft on this ocean world. Damn. A rescue ship wouldn't be able to land here!

Harrington put them back to work, though she made sure Rekha didn't overdo and reopen her wounds _again_. Grow beds were found. Several plants were growing in them, most unsurprisingly alien, except one plant that Harrington recognized.

"Chinese potatoes!" She crowed and poked in the dirt. "These things will grow practically anywhere. Oh, they're actually good sized too. Just need to build ourselves a solar oven and we'll be in business! I wonder if these things are melons? Red gods, I wish we had a proper scanner."

Their PDAs had been spitting out mostly useless advice all day. Extremely minimal scanning capabilities made their comments annoying trivia. When they'd been connected to the life pod's sensors, they'd been more useful. Harrington took their PDAs and threw them on their beds.

"Useless Alterran junk," was muttered. The Mongolian PDA was equally useless given its outdated and depleted state. It too was tossed on the beds.

Solar panels were found, cleaned up, sighed at. Too damaged to do much. Might be enough for the oven. Another PDA was found, tossed aside to be looked at later. An incredibly odd artifact was lodged in the corner of the habitat. Some sort of metallic alloy. Lightweight. Fifty centimeters long, half as wide, two centimeters thick with a glowing violet design across it. Maybe it was art? The former inhabitants had been here long enough to need hobbies. It was tossed on the growing pile of things to be examined later.

More broken equipment, crushed cargo boxes, empty bottles, and crab attacks later, Rekha sat down for a break. She'd grown up in hot, humid environments. She'd trained in all manner of extremes. Yet, she'd been on the climate-controlled _Aurora_ for 13 months and on various similar stations for months before. And don't forget that she was injured, on half rations, and at the edges of her stress limits. _And _that this planet was running on a 27.5 hour cycle that was 2.5 more than standard. She was suddenly aware that the planet's gravity wasn't more than she could handle. That would really tip the damn bucket.

Another crab showed up.

Harrington stabbed it with an impromptu spear made from a broken support bar. "I hope these things are edible."

Earth crab meat was at the bottom of her preferred proteins. She couldn't imagine this planet's tasting any better. "Thought Martians didn't eat living creatures."

"Typically, no." Harrington broke a crab leg open and sniffed the white flesh that spilled out. "Most of our protein was lab-grown, like standard Alterran practices now. Supply shortages during war made me review my moral outlook. Eat what I could get or not eat at all."

Though she licked her lips, Harrington didn't eat the meat. She shook the creature off her spear.

Rekha looked up at the sky. Clear. No gathering storm today.

"Hopefully one of these PDAs we keep finding will mention what they found to eat around here."

Rekha nodded. "That'd be nice." Her eyelids fluttered.

"Go take a nap, Dogar." Harrington ordered.

Sleep was exactly what she wanted. But, "There's work to do." And she wasn't about to let Harrington think she wasn't willing to sweat as hard as the older woman.

"There is. But it's better to let you rest and heal now while we aren't desperate."

Still didn't feel right going for a nap while Harrington wasn't.

"Go, Dogar. Your stubbornness is starting to get irritating."

Her humor was teased enough to make her lips twitch. "Yes, doctor."

Harrington's expression softened. "Go."

Rekha went inside and sealed the hatch. She fell asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

An hour and a half was given to her before Harrington woke her to help unearth another cargo crate. This one was empty and damaged. It wasn't water-tight. They decided to turn it into a table by filling it with rocks and closing the lid. Rekha ended up using it as a chair.

Night fell. Dinner was eaten. Quiet talk was made about what they would do tomorrow. They fell into beds around the corner from each other.

* * *

The next day went much the same. Harrington had them go through stretches before starting the hard work of salvage. A shattered PDA was found and tossed on the pile. Crabs were shooed away. They made plans to climb a peak the next day. Rekha managed not to aggravate her injuries. Much. Harrington still had her take a midday nap, joined her actually.

"I might be able to get your PDA out of emergency mode." Rekha offered when the alarm went off.

Harrington blinked at her, not fully awake.

"Programming and hacking are part of a Delhian soldier's basic education." Not quite. Infiltration was taught to H-class, luckily for her; it'd help immensely in her bid to escape.

Harrington stiffened, stared, sucked her lip. She fished out her PDA from the pile and handed it over.

Rekha opened a small d-pocket she had embedded in her forearm, an act that made Harrington's eyes bulge. D-pockets were extremely expensive to have installed in an organic host due to the difficulty in getting it to stabilize. Also very illegal in Alterra. The Delhian military had paid for hers, as standard for recon and infiltration specialists.

A custom PDA was pulled out. She brought up a few programs and sent their fingers into Harrington's PDA. Root systems popped up. From there, it was simple enough to manually tick the requirements to shut off emergency mode. She decided that Harrington might need access to the mode's more useful aspects, compiled a file, and left it as an icon on the home screen.

Custom PDA was pushed back into hiding, and she gave the other back. "There you are. Access to your holo-novellas and emergency blueprints sans the unnecessary AI quips about Craig McGill."

They finished the projects they'd started, had a quiet dinner and retired.

Morning came after another odd dream about being old and lonely. Rekha shook it off and joined Harrington on a slow hike to the northern peak. They found what amounted to a weathered trail that wound up in a spiral. It dumped them at a precariously placed habitat. The hatch was hanging by a single, ready-to-shatter hinge. A glass observation dome was cracked in several places, outright missing chunks on one side. Weeds and moss grew wildly inside. No crabs this high up. That was nice.

Inside was a cargo crate and a battered chair. Empty bottles, yet another PDA, and several batteries were found.

"All these batteries and nothing that needs them." Harrington grumbled.

They managed to fit the crate into a d-pocket by transferring the contents of Rekha's into Harrington's. The chair wasn't worth the trouble. Batteries and PDA were put into actual pockets. The view on the way down was admired for what it was, then dismissed for its depressing expanses of blue nothingness.

On the fourth day, they tackled the other peak. Noon found them at the final habitat. It was in even worse shape than the others. No hatch at all, no glass, no contents. With a habitat builder to break it down into base components, it would've been good as salvage at least.

"View could be worse, I suppose." Rekha said as they looked out over the ocean, the downed _Aurora_, the occasional white cap crashing into the shallow waters.

"Ma-"

"Emergency." Harrington's PDA announced. "A quantum detonation has occurred in the _Aurora's _drive core. The reactor will reach a super-critical state in T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven…"

They stared at each for two seconds. As one, they dove behind the scarce safety of the rusted habitat.

"Four," the PDA garbled out last three numbers.

The world hummed.

Then it exploded.

Rekha squeezed her eyes shut against the blinding light, clamped hands over her ears at the sonic blast that followed. She had to uncover them to grab at the habitat, hold tight against the hurricane force winds and tremors that rocked the island and tried to blast her off its peak. A kick of intense heat followed. What was left was a lingering crackle and a terrible stench in the air.

She reached out, feeling for the survivors that'd been on the ship. Three remained, all in horrible condition, one screaming out for his mother. He was alone, trapped in a corridor, pinned under something that he couldn't move. He was terrified and in pain and Rekha tried to comfort him before she realized what she was doing.

_Mommy, it hurts!_

She fell into his conscious mind, saw the I-beam pinning him to the bulkhead, that it was impossible to move, that it had actually severed his body in half, that his legs and hips and bowels were no longer attached to the rest of him.

_Mommy!_

His death would be slow. Excruciating and wretched.

Rekha told him that he was okay, that everything was going to be fine.

His heart rate slowed, and he smiled.

She killed him.

Back in her own body, she hunched and heaved up her breakfast. Harrington tried to soothe her. She didn't know, wouldn't understand, _couldn't_ know what it was like to be in someone's head when they were dying, when she killed them.

Rekha screamed.

She screamed and she cried, and she wished she'd not been born psionic, that she'd never had to deal with death and pain in the measure she had. She bawled like a child. Snot and tears covered her face, made her headache worse, made her cry harder. Harrington stopped trying to soothe her and embraced her instead.

Birdfish landing on the habitat and chirping roused her from her tears. They let themselves be dried in the stiff winds. She sniffled. Her headache growled.

"Want to talk about it?" came Harrington's soft offer.

Rekha sat back. Harrington's old-fashioned hairstyle was in disarray. Frizz ringed her skull, grey and brown strands escaping the meticulous braid that usually sat on her left collarbone. Rekha's own hair was cut in the popular style. Clipped close to the skull from base to temples, all the way around, with a mass down the center that was typically fluffed up and forward. It was a flat mess now.

"Almost all the ones who were on the _Aurora_, they're dead. I gave one of them a more merciful end than he was headed for," came out dull and monotone.

The Martian stared at her. She looked at the burning hulk. Almost half of the _Aurora _was simply gone. The explosion had ejected the entire front half of the ship; all that remained were skeletal beams. Emotions warred on her face until she faced Rekha again. They seemed to have settled on tired. "In the war, there were always patients whose lives I couldn't save. But," she ran hand over her hair. "But I could save them from pain and give them quick ends."

Rekha shuddered.

"Let's get back down while we have light."

Rekha did her best to avoid looking at the smoking wreck that taunted her with burning nightmares. She wasn't very successful.

* * *

A/N - I've read a few fics that have the dive suits being advanced nano-tech. I considered it, but it didn't feel like there'd be use for a welder if Alterra had super smart, self-repairing dive suits and stuff. That would imply that vehicles and habitats would be self-repairing too. Unless cost was a factor? As far as game mechanics go, I get why you can swim around basically unscathed in the lava zones until you run out of air, but contextually it doesn't make sense. Why have a prawn suit then except for mining? I really don't like the things. In essence, no nano-tech in this fic. Probably.

Please leave a review!


	4. Tentacle Trouble

Chapter 4  
Tentacle Trouble

Another stormy evening saw them downloading the contents of the thrashed PDAs. Turned out that survival mode could briefly power and hack other PDAs. Rather shady, but Rekha was going to remember that handy trick.

One of the PDAs offered logs from a crewman reminiscing about food from home. Rekha could sympathize. Mongolians knew how to cook. Their ships didn't serve nutrient bars as a staple meal. They grew complex gardens aboard ship, had meals full of fresh vegetables, chock full of flavor and nutrition. Rekha would dance for some good food right about now. Her mouth watered, and her stomach grumbled.

Thankfully, the PDA's owner compared home cooking with what they could eat on this planet. Sweet, but dull melons. Chewy lantern fruit. The chalky white sap of the bulbo tree. Tiny leaves of the short ferns. Crabs. Most fish.

No spices. Except salt. There was always salt. Salt everywhere! Just like the damn water.

Someone in the background yelled at them to shut up. The owner swore under their breath and stopped the recording. Other logs were mostly about day to day life onboard ship. Then complaining about the crash. And a few bemoaning a terrible flu that had come on suddenly. Nothing else after the voice had a terrible coughing fit that sounded wet and painful.

Another PDA only had a couple not-corrupted files. Personal logs from Bart Torgal, the young heir. He talked about a theory he had on teeth and enameled glass, that one of the dangerous predators living in a kelp forest had teeth heavy with metal oxides used in enamelling. Someone named Marguerit believed his theories and harvested some, allowing him to test and prove his idea. He made a side note that the predator might be domesticable, like Earth wolves.

"What good is enamelled glass here?" Harrington muttered, reaching for her PDA.

"Prawns." Rekha supplied.

"What?"

"The prawn exosuits. Regular glass wouldn't stand up to the rigors of mining or anything other than shallow exploration." She explained. "Like ordinary steel is inferior to plasteel. Plasteel and modern enamelling techniques are what make the prawn suits so damn versatile."

Harrington had her emergency blueprints up. "Why doesn't the seamoth use enamelled glass?"

"Why take a moth to a depth that would kill you?" Rekha shrugged. "These reinforced dive suits aren't suitable past one point five kilometers. The oceans on most planets go much deeper. Down there, moths would only be good for pure exploration. You can't collect materials, can't fish or mine, which a survivor needs to do. The seamoth design could be reconfigured to go beyond what the upgrade modules offered, but it would take time and significant resources. They'd be better spent building a larger submarine that can carry the prawn and double as a moving habitat."

The crewman's PDA was mostly corrupted as well. Which was fine. Most of the memory was filled with holo vids with names like _Tentacle Trouble_.

"At least we don't have to use trial and error to find edibles." Harrington tossed the PDA with the offensive holo vids into the corner. "I wasn't looking forward to ingesting possibly toxic plants."

In the morning, they sampled the melons. Not bad. Not good. Mostly tasteless. At lunch, the aptly named lantern fruit. It was like a giant, chewy grape. No wonder someone had made wine out of it. Dinner was leaves and crab cooked over a small fire. Harrington seemed to enjoy it. Rekha was not a fan, mostly of the texture, the meat's flavor was surprisingly pleasant. She spent the rest of her evening tinkering with ideas of how to make an oven out of salvage.

* * *

Island life continued on much the same. A lot of hard work mucking through wreckage and scouring the island for anything useful. Mornings offered Rekha some blissful time to herself. Most saw her on sitting on the northeastern cliffs, watching the sun rise behind the _Aurora_. It was the only time of day where she could see the shadow of what must be another island. A pair of survivors attempted to head for it on day six. Terror radiated from them mid-morning and a few minutes later, both were dead.

Every day killed another survivor or two or four. The planet's locals either thought humans were the tastiest snack in the galaxy or were just that aggressively violent. Or both. Or maybe they were dying from infected injuries and dumb mistakes. Rekha couldn't be sure. She tried to help once, when two pairs were so close to each other.

She tried to guide them, but one of the crew was so terrified that he refused to listen, got so distracted that he didn't see the hungry predator swimming up on him. His partner wasn't any better. They thought they were hallucinating and actively ignored her. The third listened, but their partner screamed about Delhian monsters and took a knife to them both. Pain and terror exploded in the connection. Rekha didn't try to help anyone else.

By the end of the third week, there was only one other survivor besides Rekha and Harrington.

"Harder to kill than a flea." Harrington joked.

The nickname stuck.

Rekha tracked the flea. Harrington would ask about them. They would hope together that the flea survived another day.

* * *

Sometimes, she imagined that she could see the lone industrious survivor out there, doing whatever they were doing to survive. They moved about a lot. She wondered what they were doing, if they'd heard anything on the radio. What was Alterra's ETA? Were they even bothering to send someone?

Had the flea dug in? Built a habitat? Found ways to avoid the giant predator that their PDAs named a reaper? Fixed the radiation leaks from the drive core that the PDA had stopped whining about? Discovered the caves that Bart Torgal had talked about moving to? Found inks to paint the terribly dull grey walls of the habitat?

Rekha wondered as she stared at the vast expanse of water without actually reaching out. Birdfish squawked around, occasionally dipping below the surface or alighting on some reef that poked up into the air. Footsteps were coming up the path. Did Harrington need something?

"Anything new today?" Harrington yawned.

Rekha shrugged. "No."

Her gaze was upward.

Rekha followed it, didn't see anything. "See something?"

Harrington bit her lip. "I thought…"

She waited.

"I thought I saw a ship up there," was nearly whispered to low for Rekha. "I was picking some fruit and saw a flash of something. So, I…" Her voice trembled to a halt.

Hope briefly fluttered in her chest. She scoured the thin clouds above for any sign of what Harrington might have seen. Nothing.

Harrington sighed and sat down. They watched the sun's lazy climb for a while before Harrington spoke again. "What's the flea up to today?"

"I haven't checked yet."

"Ah."

She started to reach out, but a distinct flash in the sky caught her attention. A ship? She reached up there instead. Human minds were there. "A ship!"

They both scrambled to their feet, cheering and jumping.

"Yes!"

It was aiming for that other island. Rekha reached out, felt the flea waiting there. They were broadcasting excitement. Pure excited hope. It seemed familiar, yet Rekha wasn't willing to intrude enough to discover their identity. The reactions of her former crewmates remained fresh in her mind. She jumped at Harrington's hand clutching at her arm.

"The flea?"

"Yea. " Rekha gasped. "They're there. Waiting." They must have a radio.

Together, they waited in silent anticipation of the ship's arrival. The ship's sensors would have picked them up as well as the flea. Logistics of getting to them might be tricky, but th-

An intensely green light shot up from the island. Terror spiked from the ship's crew, and a moment later, a fireball exploded. Smoke billowed. Dark shapes spilled in every direction. The ship was gone. Hope was gone.

Planetary defense systems? But… who? Why? And how did they come up with such powerful weaponry? A single blast that could utterly eradicate a starship, even a small one like that?

Rekha puddled to her knees. "We're never getting off this planet."

"Get up."

She frowed up at harrington. "Why?"

"We have chores to do."

Was she joking? "What the hell is the point?"

Harrington grabbed at her shirt and yanked until Rekha was on her feet. "We need to find a way off this island, disable that weapon, and survive until the next ship comes." Ferocious determination glared at her. "I didn't survive the Grass Moon War to die on this shithole of a planet. And you didn't escape Delhi to die here either."

Rekha didn't have the energy to argue.

* * *

They found the remains of a fabricator. Most of its components were absolutely worthless. Harrington set Rekha the impossible task of fixing it. Harrington soldiered forward. She kept them focused, busy, alive. They built an oven out of plasteel and powered it with a partially repaired solar panel. It cooked crab a lot better than their terrible campfires that sputtered awful smelling smoke. Nothing on the island seemed to burn well.

The old soldier was a font of determination and ideas to survive that Rekha boggled at. Without her, Rekha probably would have offed herself that day they watched the ship get shot down. It amazed her that the flea continued on as well. Who could have that much dogged determination all by themselves?

What little downtime Harrington allowed, Rekha filled it with wondering who the flea was. The captain? CTO Yu? Hessah? That annoying exo-head who always managed to damage his prawn on the simplest of EVAs? Venjie? Rekha's heart fluttered at the last. She'd developed a serious crush on that woman over the past few months. She was one of the few women who preened at Rekha's flirting yet easily shot her down.

Engineer Venjie Remus. Aside from being physically attractive, Venjie had an incredible array of amazing qualities. Intelligent, fiercely so. Resourceful, caring, easy to talk to. She had a wonderful laugh. It could be sweet or raucously loud, depending on the situation, yet always catching. Rekha could never hold a serious face when Venjie started laughing.

If the _Aurora_ hadn't been so small, Rekha would have found a way to avoid Venjie. She'd been planning on finding another commission when the phasegate was finished. Her crush had been starting to get rather serious. Frankly, she was glad that Venjie had turned her down at first. It made the boundaries of platonic friendship easier. Rekha would flirt outrageously just to make sure Venjie turned her down. Serious relationships didn't work for Rekha. She had too many secrets that Alterrans wouldn't like. She made do with simple trysts with women who didn't want anything else.

The remembered hurt made her frown. She turned her mind to something else. She really missed having a proper hygiene facility. And the accompanying toiletries. At least she'd had her annual health checkup recently and gotten her reproductive and menses control shot. Harrington was old enough not to have them at all. Rekha couldn't imagine being marooned with an active menses cycle. All that mess and smell. Her current soapless situation was bad enough. How had ancient Earth females done it?

* * *

Another angry storm whipped into them. They treated it like the others, finished their chores, went to bed, fell asleep. Except, it was still there in the morning. It kept roaring all day. Through the one intact window, they watched the storm uproot trees and wreck everything in sight.

The murderous intent of the storm made Rekha whimper. Was the habitat rocking? Fear pulsed in her. If the habitat broke apart now…

But the habitat wasn't creaking or groaning like it was losing its foundation.

"Is the _island _rocking?" she whispered.

Harrington held her hand. "I think it might be."

They both ended up vomiting from motion sickness at least once. Rekha twice. The little crate that they kept inside for emergency unloading was filling up awfully fast. Rekha thanked any gods that were listening that the lid held tight and didn't let the contents slosh. She thanked them again when the storm finally let up after three days.

Storm.

Fucking hurricane.

"We really need to get off this island." Harrington muttered as they looked out from the island toward the _Aurora._ The wreck didn't seem to have been affected, except that maybe it smoldered a little less. And it was closer.

"Are we closer? Did the island move?"

Harrington grumbled under her breath for a few moments. She suddenly threw up hands. "Rekha, how's the flea?"

Panicked, she swung wide, didn't sense anything at first, not until she reached deeper. A huff of relief came out. "Alive." They must have built a habitat at a safe depth, where the waves wouldn't be a problem.

"Maybe you should call to them." Harrington sighed.

"And have them think they're going mad when they start hearing voices? Or worse, get them eaten by monsters after surviving that hurricane?" Rekha argued. "No."

"You said they move awfully fast. They could have a seamoth. Don't those come equipped with defenses?"

"Not the standard unit. An upgrade module's required. The flea might not have access to everything, remember? If their PDA was damaged, they may very well be stuck scanning wreckage for blueprints."

Harrington rubbed her hands together. "Maybe we should open up communication and see if we can help?"

Rekha stared silently.

Harrington met her eye. "It's a risk. They might not believe the voice suddenly in their head, I know. I'll leave it as your call, Dogar."

They lapsed into their usual quiet as they returned to their valley and its chores. For Rekha, it was full of bubbling agitation. Harrington had suggested that Rekha use her psionic ability. Sure, she suggested uses for her psionics all the time: get rid of this crab, toss me that bottle, hold that up there, call me if anything happens. The old soldier barely even flinched at floating objects anymore. She'd gotten used to Rekha. She didn't seem afraid anymore. And that was _huge_.

That the Martian was voluntarily saying she was not only okay with, but would respond to, a telepathic call in an emergency situation was ultra mind-blowing. That she was willing to suggest Rekha call out to someone else was _bigger_. Harrington had come to trust an augmented person. Trusted her to respect privacy, to wait for consent, to not violate the trust given.

All that was fantastic! So why did Rekha feel agitated now? Why did she feel the need to say something more? Was it to thank Harrington? Yes, but no.

"Hey, Dogar." Harrington waved a hand. "Hand me the knife."

Dogar. That was it. "Dogar isn't my name." Dogar was Turk. A good neutral affiliation to match her cinnamon features and black hair, one that wouldn't raise eyebrows. Her family name was Sharma. Nothing special about her name aside from producing a few H-class, yet it was distinctly Delhian. Keeping her given name had been a risk, but she hadn't been willing to give it up, and it blended with the Turk name well enough.

"No?"

"I took it on when I got my Alterran citizenship. Just call me Rekha."

Harrington studied her. "Changed the family name but not your given?"

"Yes."

"Okay, Rekha. Will you hand me the knife now?"

She smiled and used her psi to grab the tool and deliver it with a flourish.

"Showoff."

As they laid down for sleep that night, Harrington spoke quietly. "May as well call me Alandris. We aren't on the ship anymore."

Rekha smiled into the darkness.

"Just don't start flirting with me like you did everyone else. My sexual preferences don't include females."

Chuckling, "Sure. Though since we already spent so much time naked together, it'd only make sense that w-"

Nails pinching the delicate skin of her thigh had her squeaking.

"Go to sleep, you insufferable little girl."

Rekha laughed, got Harrington -no- _Alandris_ laughing as well. She was sure she smiled into sleep. She definitely went out thinking about how that was the first time they'd laughed since crashing.

* * *

A/N - Can you imagine? A hurricane whips up and just pushes that floating island wherever it wants. That island could have been anywhere when the Degasi first crashed! It actually bothered me in game that it never moved.


	5. The Flea

Chapter 5  
The Flea

_They're here, Alandris!_

_Rekha? You're… you're in my head._

_Yes. They're here!_

_What?_

_The flea! The other survivor! I was up at a peak hab, checking for good wiring when I saw movement on the beach. There's a seamoth down there! I'm heading there now._

_Did you recognize them?_

Rekha was glad she wasn't having to speak aloud. She was already panting hard from the dead sprint she'd launched into. _No. Too far._

_I'll meet you there._

Rekha returned her attention to the steep path winding down from the peak. It was a struggle. She wanted to keep tabs on the flea, but she also needed to not slip and fall to a squishy death. Who had thought a mountainous peak was a good place for a habitat? Stupid Mongols.

Somehow, she made it safely off the treacherous path with only one close call. Stupid loose rocks trying to kill her. She searched for the flea. Okay, that direction. She left the path and dove into the jungle. Plants slapped her in the face, probably left cuts and welts at her breakneck passage. A scream assaulted Rekha when she burst through the thick foliage in front of the flea. She backpedaled. "Sorry!" Breath heaved out of her, and she had to bend over to not fall down. "I ran," pant, "Here." Pant. "Saw you land."

"By the Charter!" the flea shrieked. "Are you real?"

Rekha caught her breath and looked up. Venjie Remus was staring at her. "I um, I'm real."

"Rekha Dogar," was said slowly, reverently.

The staring kept up, Rekha rooted in place, limbs frozen. Of all the people to survive, it was Venjie. Her heart found the energy to rush madly again.

Abruptly, Venjie's hands were touching her face, her shoulders, her arms. "I'm not hallucinating!" gushed out.

"Ye-yea." Rekha was enveloped in a crushing hug. "Oof."

Breath whispered across her neck. "I'm not alone."

Not anymore. Rekha hugged her back.

"Rekha?" called through the jungle.

Venjie jerked. "There's someone else? More survivors?"

"That's Alandris." At Venjie's blank look, "Dr. Harrington. We were in the same pod." She sucked in a breath. "There's no one else."

"Where are you?" shouted again.

"Here!" Rekha returned.

Noisy crashing through the plants preceded Alandris' grumpy face. Her expression shifted to delight on seeing Venjie. "Gods."

"Dr. Harrington!" coughed from Venjie, though her body jerked toward the new arrival, she seemed reluctant to let go of Rekha.

"Remus, right?" Alandris asked. "Drive core engineer?"

"Yes, doctor. Venjie Remus."

Alandris smoothed her hair back and laughed. "No need for formalities around here. It's Alandris."

"Alandris," she whispered. A second later, she burst into tears. "Gods, I'm sorry. I just… People."

Rekha did her best to soothe Venjie, patting her back, telling her she understood, that it was okay. Alandris stepped close to set a hand on Venjie's shoulder. Venjie's arm darted out to grab the older woman and pull her into the embrace. Similar soothing murmurs came from Alandris. They stood there until curious crabs appeared.

One of them went flying before Rekha stopped herself. No need to frighten Venjie with psi. Alandris used her ever-present spear to stab another. "Hungry, Venjie? These things aren't bad."

A laugh coughed out. "I suppose it is lunch time."

In a tight knot, the three of them hiked to the valley, where Venjie gasped about the habitat and its history.

Rekha prepped the crab for cooking while Alandris harvested some fruit for an amazed Venjie. "Fresh fruit?" She dug in with gusto, juices dribbling down her chin. Cute and terribly sad at the same time.

Their last melon was cut up. Alandris carefully set aside the seeds for when they finally had power for an interior growbed. The hurricane had finished destroying the exterior ones and most of their contents. Venjie gasped over the melon's sweet, tender flesh and nearly cried at the fresh greens that Rekha cooked the crab with.

Alandris told the abbreviated tale of how she and Rekha had survived. Pod's flotation device failed, they decided to swim up, barely avoided the giant leviathan swimming around. They found the valley, had been stuck here since. Appreciation filled Rekha. Alandris was keeping her secret.

Venjie wiped her mouth and cleared her throat. "I landed in what I've come to think of as the shallows. No big predators. Lots of little fish and materials I needed to build basic tools to repair my pod. I probably would've stayed in it for a while, but these storms…"

Rekha and Alandris nodded in understanding. A storm that could shake an island would've decimated a lifepod.

"My pod was in really bad shape for a while." Venjie explained. Her tone lacked the raw horror that Rekha's would've been layered with had she been speaking. "Radio, medcabinet, fabricator, all down. Only two days worth of food and water, no equipment or raw materials to build with. I count myself lucky that my parents were geologists for a mining group. They taught me a lot about identifying rocks and minerals when I was little."

Had she ever once doubted her ability to survive?

"I never would have made it this far if I couldn't find copper without a scanner in my hand. Even after I built one, I can't imagine having to scan every meter of stone looking for resources. It's bad enough I've had to scan nearly every fish and plant I've come across.

I first built a little base in one of the kelp forests, but the light-forsaken sharks kept attacking. Stupid things are attracted to metal. I've watched them fight over scraps of hull, should've occured to me." Venjie groused. "I moved it briefly to a fairly shallow area with lots of red kelp and annoying ambush predators until I could upgrade my air tanks. Now, I've got a nice setup in the mushroom forest. Few predators. Wish the ghost ray songs weren't so creepy, but I'll take it. There's plenty of materials to recycle from a nearby chunk of wreckage."

Rekha was enthralled. She'd always known Venjie to be capable and resourceful, but her story was incredible! No fear at all. Only her usual optimism that she could handle anything thrown her way.

"How did you build a scanner if your fabricator was down?" Alandris asked.

"Oh. I cannibalized the other broken equipment until I managed to get it running long enough to fab a welder." Venjie wiggled her fingers. "I really hope that the welder's inventor is living a comfortable life. They deserve it. That is the single most useful tool in the galaxy."

It really was. The tool could mend ripped rubber, plasteel, wiring, basically anything except organic material. If you had the blueprints of the equipment, it could fix really complicated apparatus, like computer chips. Hours of time were saved using the welder instead of having to replace ruptured hulls, frayed wiring, cracked prawn casings…

"I think you're just as lucky to have mechanical expertise as having geology training." Alandris hummed.

Rekha nodded. "Luckier to have landed in the shallows. That leviathan we saw," she flinched at the reminder. "It's huge."

"I saw your pod down there." Venjie said quietly, an ounce of fear in her words, though mostly sad. "It looks like most of the others I've come across. Massive hole in it, like big claws ripped the plasteel open."

She touched the mostly healed gouges on her ribs. Remembered pain and terror seared across her torso, through her veins, made her bite her lip to keep it inside.

"It has enormous mandibles." Alandris' tone was hushed with dread.

Venjie nodded. "I've seen it. Meters long, big enough to eat a person in a bite or two. Scanner called it a reaper."

Reaper. Apt name.

"Did you hear it? That roar it makes? It's echolocation." Venjie said.

Rekha balked "You can't be serious. It's not to inspire terror in its prey?"

Venjie shook her head. "That's only a bonus for it."

Wind rattled leaves. Rekha looked for angry clouds, was glad not to see any this evening.

"I've been on autopilot for so long," whispered Venjie. "Surviving. Hoping to find others." She looked distinctly uncomfortable. "After the _Sunbeam_..." She shook her head.

"The _Sunbeam_?" Rekha prompted after several moments.

She frowned. "Did you see the ship that tried to come down?"

"Oh." Rekha sighed. Alandris' lips became a thin line. "We did."

"It was the _Sunbeam._ There's something on the island over there, a weapon."

"Planetary defense to be that powerful." Rekha supplied.

Venjie frowned deeper. "Yes. It shot down our rescue. It probably shot down the _Aurora_ and the _Degasi_. The scanner couldn't identify the materials that it was built with. I couldn't get in to investigate. There are forcefields, powerful ones, blocking the entrances."

Another gust of wind parted the leaves, let scalding sunlight flicker across Rekha's neck and shoulders.

"Did you notice that this island is floating?" Venjie suddenly brightened.

"Floating?"

She laughed. "Yes!" Her arms went wide. "These giant organisms are attached to the base of it, they're full of air sacs that make them and whatever they're stuck to float. This whole island is floating!"

Rekha and Alandris looked at each other. "That explains a lot."

"What?"

Alandris brushed at her frizzy hair. "We thought it was our imagination, but that hurricane moved us closer to the _Aurora_. We both struggled with motion sickness from the rocking."

"I need off this planet." Rekha muttered.

Venjie sighed agreement.

"We should probably start by getting off this island." Alandris said. "Get to Venjie's habitat, if you don't mind guests for a while."

"That'd be great!" She smiled. "But the seamoth only seats one."

"And I'm not keen on swimming out in the open." Rekha's imagination conjured up how quickly that leviathan, that _reaper_ would try to eat her again.

A noise of disgust came from Alandris. "Oh think outside the box, children!"

Rekha glared at her. "Yes, mom. Venjie, do you have the materials to build a couple more moths?"

She shook her head. "No. But, I could rig a tow. We can use wire cables or kelp strands. Those things are amazingly tough. I think we're outside of, or at least on the edge, of the local reaper's territory. They're more active at night. If we go during the day, we should be fine."

"Better." Alandris praised.

Venjie nodded. "You said you came up from the deep, what kind of equipment do you have?"

They went into detail about the quality of their gear, that the gauges said the tanks had refilled by themselves. Alandris mentioned that both their suits needed repairs. The island had been rough on them.

Venjie produced her welder and went to work making the suits usable for diving again. Plans were made for Venjie to return to her base the next day, to take a load of supplies from the island and collect means for a tow. In the meantime, the habitat on the island would be renovated.

They finally put their stockpile of old batteries to use. Venjie's habitat builder disassembled the broken chunks of habitat into their base components, then they shrugged and had her take down everything. From the surplus, a large multipurpose room was built. No holes. One functional window. A few lockers. A bed. An actual bed instead of rolls of rubber and mesh, even blankets, oddly textured, yet comforting. It was big enough that all three sharing it for a night wouldn't be terrible.

Four batteries later, there was a functioning fabricator and solar panels to power it _and _ the luxurious temperature controls. A battery charger was built and filled with the depleted cells.

"Are we going to leave this here when you come down?" Venjie asked.

Alandris smoothed her hair. "I expect we'll be making regular trips here for a while. Access to the abundance of fresh water and greenery is important, not to mention the good a little fresh air and sunlight can do."

Rekha chose not to mention how little she liked the idea of going meters below the surface, to a world where sunlight was a vague notion, and how quickly a habitat could become a cramped, dark tomb. She swallowed a shudder.

From the crates, they pulled supplies and began organizing them in the shiny new lockers.

"What is this," chirped from Venjie. She was pointing at the odd Mongolian art.

"Don't know." Alandris hummed. "Found it here."

"It's the same as…" Her expression was somewhere between fear and anger. "I saw a similar symbol at the other island. I think it might be a key."

"A key?"

"To the alien weapon." Venjie waved in its general direction. "There's what seems like a terminal directly outside the forcefield. I bet this thing is an access key."

Made more sense than it being art, she supposed.

Venjie asked to take it, received no argument, and the tablet was put in Venjie's d-pocket.

Dinner was a celebration. They shared nostalgic stories, told jokes, and enjoyed the presence of hope. Sunset was a miraculous glow in Venjie's amber eyes. All that hope and beauty made Rekha's blood race. She had to turn away and swallow the want that surged in her chest. Just because Venjie was stuck on this planet too didn't mean a relationship had any more possibility of blooming here than on the _Aurora_.

Stupid heart. Why did it want more than good sex?

Darkness took over the island despite the plant life's glowing attempts otherwise. Rekha allowed her eyelids to droop and her senses to dull. She was ready to be the first one in bed, to be asleep before Venjie got in and made Rekha's senses buzz. A yawn stretched her jaw. "Don't know about you two, but I'm exhausted."

Venjie looked shocked. "It's early yet."

Not surprised, Alandris waved.

"Good dreams." Rekha yawned as she moved away.

"Oh." Venjie's voice followed. "Good night!"

She wasn't asleep by the time her companions decided to call it a night. Having Alandris take the other edge meant that Venjie was crammed between, her soft frame pressing along Rekha's. She was certain that Venjie could hear her heart hammering at her ribs. She must. Wh-

"No." Alandris grunted.

"There's not as much space as I thought there'd be." Venjie hissed.

"Even if I wanted to cuddle, this bed is too warm for it. Spoon Rekha."

"She's asleep." Venjie whispered. "I'm not going to impose on her like that."

Any other situation Rekha would have already rolled over. Her hands would be grazing along Venjie's thighs while her teeth nibbled on her ear. Hot breath on an exposed neck. Soft words whispered. It'd be an enjoyably long night.

Rekha wanted to run.

She also wanted to see what being held by Venjie was like. She was tired of being lonely.

Time to get up. She forced out a stretch and yawned loudly. "This thing is too soft," was muttered. She pretended to be surprised by the extras in bed. "I actually slept?"

Suspicion crooked Alandris' brow. "A couple hours."

"Oh." Rekha yawned, a real one this time. "Maybe I'll catch a few more on the floor." She avoided Venjie's eye and put feet to cool floor. Spare mats were retrieved and laid out. Her skin prickled from the habitat's cool air, made her regret exiting the bed's warmth, made the lack of pillow more prevalent. She stifled a groan. No way was she getting more sleep tonight.

"You're right, doctor." Venjie suddenly spoke. "The bed is too warm."

Feet slapped on the floor, crossed to Rekha, made her open her eyes. "But the floor is freezing." Venjie crouched, held out the blanket. "Want it?"

She managed to hesitate only because Venjie's care tangled her thoughts. "Yes."

Warm blanket was arranged from feet to shoulders, then a pillow was presented and gratefully accepted. "Good night," was smiled at her.

Fantasies of a domestic life flitted through Rekha's skull for what felt like half the night. When she finally got to sleep, she dreamt of Venjie's smile. Waking up to reality was a disappointment. Luckily, she woke first and had time to let the sunrise clear her mind and school her expression. She returned as Alandris was finishing breakfast prep. A serving was handed her on a piece of scrap they used as plates.

"We'll have fish and kelp salad tomorrow." Venjie promised after a few bites. "I've figured out which taste the least awful," was giggled.

"How appetizing." Alandris deadpanned.

Easy laughter warmed the room, challenged Rekha's fresh control on her emotions.

"Raw kelp isn't bad, but I wish I'd had your oven. The fabricator does _not_ offer appetizing creations." Venjie made a gagging motion.

Inspiration hit Rekha. "I could probably rig together a stovetop." She brought up her PDA, swiped through the copy of the _Aurora's _blueprints in it, focused on the galley. "Yea. I can put this together."

Alandris was peeking over her shoulder. "Can't you send this to the hab builder?"

"Not easily. This isn't an authorized copy. It'll be much faster to manipulate what it already has."

"Your PDA's unlocked?" Venjie gaped.

Dammit. She didn't have a story ready. Wh-

"Rekha has a knack for technology." Alandris supplied. "Hadn't you noticed?"

Venjie snorted. "It's always about how good she is with her hands, isn't it?"

She jumped on the topic change. "And my mouth."

Venjie rolled her eyes. "A regular prodigy. Which reminds me, Dogar. My answer is still no."

No. She wouldn't have casual sex with Rekha. A pout was summoned. "But sex is good for the soul, Venjie! If there's anything that could help keep morale up after crash landing, it's endorphins."

"No." Venjie took her plate to the crate they used as a wash bin. "I should be leaving. It'll take me some time to put our ideas together, but I should be back by four."

* * *

Venjie didn't show up by four. She still wasn't there when the sun sank into the horizon. Rekha reached out with psi before either of them could ask terrible questions out loud. Venjie was near the other island. Alive, seemed unhurt. She and Alandris frowned, yet kept their questions until Venjie arrived late the next morning.

"I apologize for not being here earlier." Venjie explained. She seemed disconcerted at how calm her companions were about her delay. "I went to investigate the weapon platform."

"The tablet was a key?" curiosity had Alandris leaning forward.

Venjie nodded. "Yes." Her tone peaked with excitement. "The forcefield dropped, and I walked into this incredible building. It has robotic crabs for auto maintenance. The walls are decorated in these intricate details. PDA can't decide if it's aesthetic or practical. I found terminals where I downloaded data, though my PDA is still trying to decipher the language. All it's managed to put together is…"

Rekha wanted to shake her when she didn't elaborate.

"Venjie?" Alandris spoke.

She shook her head. "It says something about a quarantine. There's a disease on this planet that the weapon's builders didn't want getting off."

A disease? Most viruses and bacteria couldn't infect alien life.

"A disease that someone is concerned with not spreading?" Alandris touched her braid. "Either the builders are human or this disease can cross species. Both are very, very bad."

"I don't think they're human." Venjie held up her PDA. "I scanned these weapons being held in stasis. There's no way a human culture has these and no one knows about it, let alone the technology to build the alloys, the forcefields, or the stasis chambers! It's all way beyond our capabilities."

True alien life. Only a couple of sentient species had been discovered, none of which had been more advanced than hunter-gatherers, let alone was huge.

"This is momentous." Alandris said. "And terrifying. All of us, we're to do daily self-scans. You'll report any change immediately. In fact, Venjie could I use yours?"

It was handed over and used to scan Rekha. "Scan complete. System normal." The same was announced for each of them. A collective breath was let out.

"Good." The doctor nodded. "Let's get the rest of our gear and head out."

Venjie's PDA chose that moment to chirp. "Playing partially translated broadcast." It announced. They looked at each other. Noise, garbled and grating, sent shivers down her spine. "Nine new biological subjects designated. Mode," more unnerving noise, "Hunting/analyzing. Sharing subject locations with other agents."

Why did the PDA find it necessary to give that voice a rather threatening tone?

Angry movements smoothed Alandris' hair. "Why in the galaxy was it necessary to have that kind of voice installed in the PDA? Remus, what was that?"

Hands trembling, Venjie studied her PDA. "It came from the planet. Another alien broadcast."

No answers came. Not from the sky, the island, or the vast expanse of ocean, no matter how far Rekha reached. "Another mystery that we can't solve standing here." She spoke with as much calm bravado as she could muster. "Let's get back to doing what we can."

Wide-eyed disbelief spread on Venjie. Her mouth opened, but Alandris beat her to talking. "Rekha is right. We have work to do." Alandris nodded and closed the topic. Silently, Rekha followed, helped finish the last of the preparations to leave.

She wasn't at all looking forward to being towed behind a sub through open water. It was going to be uncomfortable, terrifying, and _long_. Not to mention boring. And agonizingly frustrating now that she had that disturbing broadcast to replay in her brain.

Alandris appeared at her side. "Rekha." She glanced at the door and Venjie on the other side. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "This is going to be a long trip."

Yes. It was. She held back a frown when Alandris didn't keep going.

Hair got irritably shoved back. A breath was huffed. "Will you make it so we can talk? That broadcast…"

A Martian was asking for a telepathic conversation? Willingly? Rekha's jaw dropped.

"I… Gods. I don't want to be alone in my head with that for the next few hours." Alandris spat out.

_What if I was planning to take a nap instead?_ Rekha opened up.

Alandris jerked, irises thinning to rings. _Red gods! I haven't even lowered my defenses! They don't mean anything to an H-class, do they?_

_That's incredibly rude. You asked for an open comm. _Rekha closed the channel and made to walk away. Always with the weapon references!

Alandris stepped in front of her. Fright remained vivid. She fumbled with her braid, met Rekha's hurt gaze. "I'm sorry." She glanced over her shoulder to the door. Venjie was peering in. "Please forgive an old soldier her old prejudices."

Rekha stared into her eyes, studied the fear in them, the plea right beside. _I can't decide if you're ultra brave or ultra desperate._

Pulse ragged in her throat, Alandris shrugged. _Honestly, I'm not sure. If someone had told me a few months ago that I was going to find myself trusting and appreciating the company of a Delhian, I would have laughed in their face._

Everything about her posture and tone said she was speaking honestly. Rekha wasn't sure how to respond. Her insides squirmed at the prospect of having a real friend in the old soldier. A Martian who trusted her. Wow.

"Everything okay in there?" Venjie called.

Alandris offered a weak smile before turning around. "We're almost done." She picked up a stray bottle, put it in a locker. The hab system was put into hibernation mode. "Let's go."

They left the habitat behind, trekked across the island, and got into the harnesses that Venjie had put together.

"You're completely certain about this?" Venjie questioned.

_Can you sense that monster?_ Alandris asked.

_No. It's either too far or sleeping._

_Oh good._ "I am not." Alandris announced. "But I'm going to do it anyway."

Rekha smiled and settled her mask into place. Alandris did the same. Disbelief was shot at both of them. "Okay. I'll do a few circles near the surface to test them. Then I'll dive and make hourly checkins."

Alandris nodded. _You'll tell her if there's trouble?_

_I will._

There wasn't. The harnesses worked fine if not comfortably. Turbulence wasn't even that bad. And the company in her head was pleasant. Rekha could get used to having a friend for long trips. A real friend. One who knew what she was and trusted her anyway. Could she have that with Venjie too? Maybe… maybe more?

* * *

A/N - Nope. No Rylie in my version.


	6. Venjie's Glorious Habitat

_Chapter 6_  
_Venjie's Glorious Habitat_

The mushroom forest was more than aptly named. For as far as she could see, there were tall stalks of coral as thick and tall as Earth trees, covered in massive fungi. Huge, flat caps that were easily larger than the moth, maybe as large as a multipurpose room. A good, defensible place, if skin-crawling creepy. Few fish. No predators that Rekha could sense. Only beautiful, raylike creatures that sang sad, sad songs. The 'trees' were close enough together that a reaper would have difficulty maneuvering, yet far enough apart that a carefully planned base would fit nicely.

Venjie had built an amazing base. It wasn't large by any means, but it had a moonpool and three multipurpose rooms stacked on top of each other. The corridor from the moonpool led into the middle room. A workshop. Loads of workspace, storage, and two fabricators. Glorious. The top was a bedroom. The bottom was a kitchen and lounge. There was a working radio, a medkit station, and a coffee machine. She also had a hygiene room. The pinnacle of glory! Her habitat was a veritable palace compared to the cramped quarters that Rekha had been stuck in.

Solar panels covering the moonpool provided power for everything. Venjie was in the process of planning expansion for a bioreactor and farm once she'd found the necessary blueprints. And seeds. She kept hoping to find the ship's small gardening module intact, or at least the seed storage. Seeds were always good trade when hopping between colony worlds.

They didn't think twice about the three of them sharing the same bedroom. Each got her own small bunk and locker. Rekha marveled at what Venjie had managed to create all by herself. Absolutely incredible given that her PDA had been damaged and lacking most of the necessary blueprints. She'd had to scrape together blueprints for most of by it scanning pieces of wreckage. No wonder the flea had wandered all over the place!

Joy was dampened the next day when Alandris announced that her self-scan reported an unknown bacterial infection. Possibly the same disease that the aliens had set up the quarantine to prevent spreading. Damn. If only the PDA could actually translate more of what Venjie had downloaded from the weapon platform. Some useful information would be nice.

"Here's a bad idea." Alandris added to the quiet breakfast table.

Rekha couldn't help the giddy rush of excitement from being at an actual table instead of squatting on a crate. "What's that?" she smiled.

"We could see if the _Aurora's_ computer core is still active. It should be able to translate what the PDAs can't."

"Go aboard the ship?" wheezed out, her mind and heart overloaded from the terrible memories of the drive core explosion. She dropped her hands under the table to grip at her thighs. _Mommy!_ screamed through her head anyway.

Alandris' eyes went round. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up." She dropped her gaze, poked at her food.

"You're right. It's a monumentally bad idea." Venjie said. Questioning eyes darted between them. "The ship is unstable. There are fires and debris everywhere. It's too dangerous."

"You boarded the _Aurora_ after it exploded?" Rekha demanded.

She shrugged. "Radiation was spreading. The shielding needed to be repaired."

Awe warmed in her chest. She gaped at the bravery it must have taken.

"The computers were starting to fail. Too many compromised systems. I'm sure they're next to useless now." Venjie stabbed at her fish.

"We might as well start working like we'll be stuck here long term." Rekha found her voice. "Answers could be out there, but they're going to be hard to find. We need multiple vehicles and at least one more moonpool. Solar panels have been sufficient until now, but we need that reactor to start expanding. A large farm won't take that much power, but water filtration and power cell charging will."

The untouched bite on her fork was considered. "Venjie, I can fix your PDA. Then we'll go over supplies and what we're lacking for the expansion, make plans to procure more. Fish will be our best source of fuel for the reactor. Edible plants are too precious to waste them for our morality. I think I saw an aquarium in the files. I'll look into its usefulness. We should set up standard shifts." She shoved the bite in her mouth.

Venjie and Alandris were staring at her.

She waited for arguments or approval. She frowned when neither came. "Unless you don't approve?"

Venjie shook her head. They both looked at Alandris.

"Are you waiting for me to tell you to do it?" Alandris asked.

She was used to the chain of command. "You're senior here," was her teasing reply.

"Look here, little girl…"

All teasing gone, Rekha added. "We should discuss all changes and moves forward as a crew. It wouldn't do for one of us to plan use of our resources, but no one else knows about it. The shortages and fights it would cause aren't acceptable uses of our time."

Alandris nodded. "I agree."

"So do I." Venjie smiled.

"Good. Do either of you have comments on my plan?"

"I agree that we need a reactor before we start expanding. We should plan our base design. The giant coral and fungus will make it tricky." Venjie gestured out the window at the enormous shelf-like fungi. "The forest is great for its lack of predators, but building in it… Should we move now that we have a crew to defend it?"

Alandris looked at Rekha. The terror of the reaper's attack was in her eyes. "No."

"No. I'd rather build around the trees." Rekha shuddered.

"Okay. Some of the fungal shelves are strong enough to support small modules. Keep that in mind. We can also cut through them if necessary, but it takes hours."

They spent several days planning the expansion. Several more days were spent implementing the plans. Luckily, the nearby wreck provided more than enough raw material for long corridors and the sections they connected. Five rooms stacked on top of each other for the farm. A room between that and the second moonpool was the reactor. Once they'd gathered more material, another tower for exercise and living quarters. The original small tower would be devoted to workspace and storage. A third tower for recreation and a kitchen.

It seemed like a massive waste of time to build an entire tower for luxuries. Then Rekha thought about how long they could feasibly be stuck here, and it made obvious sense. They needed spaces to decompress from stressful days, to bond with each other over fun instead of work.

Rekha was checking the status of an outdoor growbed when her mind was opened up. Intensely powerful and curious, a presence wondered at her. _What. Are. You?_ It vanished as abruptly as it had appeared and left her feeling dizzy. She swayed. What? She reached out, hunting for the psionic who'd touched her mind, found nothing but fish.

Had she hallucinated that?

Beautifully creepy, a glowing ray swam past her head, its light brighter than the dim sunlight streaming down. Her stomach growled. Tired and hungry that's all. It was late. She stowed her scanner and found a hatch inside, didn't say anything to her crewmates.

A week later, it happened again. That immense presence. It showed up, questioned her existence, and vanished. This time, Rekha asked her companions about it.

"What?" Venjie frowned at her. "A telepath on this planet? If there's anything good about this place it's the lack of psionics."

Rekha looked at Alandris.

"I haven't heard anything." The doctor hummed, a light rasp to her voice. She cleared her throat. "Maybe we should take a day and visit the surface, get some sunlight."

There was hearty agreement on that. Rekha volunteered to be the one towed. Talk of building a third seamoth was made. As before, it was vetoed. They needed a prawn suit to drill minerals, couldn't justify the use of resources for convenience on a rest day. A new harness and tow kit were fabricated. Stronger and more comfortable than what Venjie had managed alone.

Alandris motioned the silent gesture that indicated she wanted Rekha to touch her mind.

_Hourly updates_, were demanded.

_I'll let you know every time I unload into my suit._

Alandris groaned, earned Venjie's questioning gaze.

Fear liquified Rekha's insides. Would Alandris spill her secret now? Would Venjie hate her?

"I wish our suits had designs for waste disposal." Alandris said aloud. "What shortsighted fool thought that suits designed for deep water shouldn't have waste disposal? Wouldn't it be easy enough to include a second d-pocket for that?"

"Maybe Rekha could come up with something." Venjie shrugged. "She seems to have a knack for tinkering with blueprints."

Heat flushed her cheeks.

Encouragement smiled at her. "Anyone who can build a kitchen with just a welder and laser cutter deserves a pay raise."

Her heart fluttered and more heat built in her face. She was rather proud of what she'd managed to create. Oven, cooking surface, and cold storage unit. "Thank you," rasped out. She swallowed heavily, composed herself. "Thank you. I'll see what I can do about the suits. I can't promise anything. They're really out of my area of expertise."

* * *

Intense, natural sunlight burned Rekha's eyes. Every pebble stabbed her feet through the thin soles of her worn shoes. Within the jungle, hot, dense air choked her lungs.

"Why was this a good idea?" Venjie croaked.

Alandris smiled up at the cloudless sky, tears spilling from her slotted eyes. "Sunlight is good for your health."

The distant hulk of the _Aurora_ continued to smolder. It would probably take months for the superheated alloys to cool and the fires within to burn out. Rescue would take even longer. Seeing their old habitat in its valley nest, memory assaulted Rekha, and she reflexively did a sweep for human life. The lack of it had her sitting down. In the excitement of building the forest base, of having crewmates and hope and ideas to share, she'd managed to forget how alone and marooned she was.

Venjie sat beside her. "When you appeared in the middle of the jungle and let me know that I wasn't alone anymore…" A broken smile curved. "Gods. I'd never been more glad to see anyone in my life. And then it turned out to be you of all people." Something delicate softened her smile, made it warmer, brighter, ultra attractive.

Rekha gulped.

"I'm glad you're here," she suddenly choked. "Not that I would wish this situation on anyone! I wish we were back on the ship, safe and sound with our friends and crewmates. Not like this…"

"I have to agree," came Alandris' quiet addition. "I got lucky being down here with the two of you. CTO Yu was a decent officer, but she would have been useless. You two act like children half the time, but at least you've got some reasonable skills."

Venjie stuck out her tongue.

_Aw, thanks, mom._

_Hush, little girl._

Giggles spilled out of her, and the awful heat was forgotten. Sunlight became a wonderful glow. A breeze tickled their senses. They stayed the rest of the day, crashed in the hab, had fresh crab and melon for breakfast. Happy, sun-drenched memories kept Rekha company as the sun vanished and the water closed in.


	7. Food for Crabs

Chapter 7  
Food for Crabs

Alandris was clearing her throat for the third time that morning. The scanner had been reporting increasing bacteria levels in her system over the past two weeks. Today, the scanner's report was almost alarmed at how infected the doctor was. Rekha certainly was.

She kept the report of her own scan to herself. Luckily, she'd done it on first waking, before the others. And no one thought to think that she might be lying. Unknown bacterial infection.

Time to find out if the ship's computers were truly down or simply cut off from external use.

"I think Alandris' bad idea is one we need to revisit." Rekha said.

"Go to the _Aurora_?" Venjie hissed. "Have you gone mad?"

"Do you have any other way to translate the data? Or maybe a cure for the disease that killed all of the Mongols, that _will _kill Alandris?" Rekha returned.

Venjie gasped angrily, then went pale.

"I'll go." Rekha explained. "My dive suit will protect me from most of the dangers." Her telekinesis most others. Unless the ship literally collapsed on top of her. "I'll build a decent radio beforehand; it's been on my to-do list anyway." Stupid Alterran tech. "If the computer core or transmitters are salvageable, I can handle it."

Alandris' expression was hard enough to dent plasteel, though her mouth stayed closed.

"Just yesterday, you were petrified at the idea of going into the _Aurora_. Now, you're volunteering to go it alone?" Venjie balked.

Rekha shrugged. She still was, but someone needed to. Might as well be her. "Yes."

"You'll do no such thing!" Venjie jumped to her feet. "I went in alone because I thought I was! Standard safety protocols say it should be two crew in dangerous scenarios."

"But…"

"She's right." Alandris wiped at her nose. "Both of you should go."

Argument raged in her chest. She was more than capable of handling this alone, didn't need to endanger anyone else. That she really didn't want to do it, especially not alone, helped her shove aside the arguments. "If that's the majority." Rekha submitted.

Venjie gaped at her. "How do you cool your emotions that fast?"

Years of training. "It _was _my idea that crew consensus should rule."

"Here I thought you wanted me in charge." Alandris deadpanned.

She chose not to respond and switched the topic to planning the excursion. They could go tomorrow if Rekha could get radios working tonight. With two seamoths at their disposal, it'd be almost comfortable.

Putting together properly working radios took a lot less time than she expected. She finished three handheld devices and was poking at the moths' systems before dinner was ready. By bedtime, both moths were upgraded. "Radiation might interfere with long-range communication, and they won't penetrate a kilometer of stone, but otherwise, we are good to go." Rekha nodded her triumph.

"Well done, Rekha." Alandris praised.

"Tell me that when we get back alive," was Rekha's dry response.

Alandris eyed her, nodded. "Make sure you do."

* * *

Staring at the looming hulk of their dead ship, Rekha wasn't sure she had full control of her bladder, let alone the willpower to actually enter that death trap.

_Mommy!_

"Rekha?"

She shook out of memory, realized she was sweating, and wiped her face.

"Hey, Rekha. Did your new radios die already?"

"Sorry, Venjie. No. I was thinking."

"About how to get in my pants again?" There was a lilt to her tone that said she was joking to lighten the mood. She must be as scared as Rekha.

That revelation found her calm. Her snark returned, "It _is_ my favorite subject." She eased the moth forward, following Venjie around to the front of the wreck, and through the twisted skeleton of the nose, only to stop dead at a shadow moving below. Not a second later, there came the distinct roar of a reaper. Her bladder released control.

Another roar, then another, before she noticed Venjie waving from her moth. She had maneuvered to face Rekha, both of them hiding like prey fish among the metal fingers of the _Aurora_. How was her face that damn calm? Venjie motioned for silence, then gestured movement over to what looked like a ledge. What was left of floor or ceiling of a deck. It sloped into the water, providing a docking spot and place to climb up into the smoldering hell.

When Venjie moved, Rekha followed. They zipped quickly from hiding spot to ledge and set the moths to settle on the ledge. It held, and they exited. Crabs immediately charged at them.

"Little shits." Rekha grunted as she batted two away with an arm, one with psi when Venjie's back was to her.

"Last time I was here, I cleared a path to a hallway there." Venjie pointed among the shadows. "Hopefully the wreckage hasn't shifted and blocked it again." She'd said as much during planning, as well as drawn a rough diagram of what route she'd taken through the hallways and guts of the ship, what was left, what was impossibly blocked, what she hadn't explored.

Rekha gestured for her to lead, with her repulsor gun and experience. Not to admire her backside. Not like she'd once done, though it intrigued her more now than ever. She nearly slapped herself at the hot wave of emotion that spilled through her at the thought of being forever alone. "Stop it," she did hiss at herself, thankfully unheard over the waves, groaning metal, and chittering crabs.

There was some shifted wreckage. Venjie complained about a beam that half-covered the blackened doorway in. They had to crawl under it on hands and knees. Knee pads suddenly seemed like an important item that should have been on her to-do list. Sharp edges greeted her not three meters in. Internal explosions must have forced that bulkhead inward like that. A few more meters and the daylight was lost. Inky blackness had to be chased back with lamps. Acrid air, full of the stink of burned _everything_ had them putting on rebreathers to keep from coughing the entire way.

Between the damage and darkness, it took Rekha some minutes to orient herself. They were on a lower level. Crew quarters, messhall, hygiene facilities, and recreation. Computer core was above them. The first elevator shaft they encountered had door welded shut by intense heat. The second was totally blocked. Venjie didn't even aim for the third. She headed to the emergency shafts, cramped tunnels with ladders.

Rekha had used the tunnels a handful of times. Usually only emergency drills, but sometimes when she wanted to avoid people, sometimes for a quiet tryst. Or not so quiet, if she worked especially hard. Not helping, she growled at herself. An hour of climbing, crawling, and even swimming finally saw them at the computer core. There wasn't as much obvious damage as she'd expected. The jarring of impact and explosion hadn't set anything loose and the fire suppressants had worked. Ultra lucky. What about the power source?

"Everything is dark." Venjie spoke. "I wonder if the power lines got severed."

"More likely the breakers." Rekha was already at the breaker box, nodding at what she saw. All had been tripped, several needed to be replaced. "It's the breakers. I need to find a supply closet."

The nearest was blocked off. The next was in a corridor from her nightmares. _Mommy, it hurts_! There wasn't a body, but she didn't need it to see her crewmate screaming for his mother.

"Rekha?"

Shaking her head, she bulled into the closet, gathered what she needed in a maintenance tote, found a few things that she wanted to take back to base, and refused to answer Venjie's questions. She steeled herself against Venjie's forlorn sigh and went to work. A couple breakers were stubborn and required delicate coaxing that she barely had the patience for. She broke the casing of more than one, had to use a welder to repair them before inserting the new breakers.

"Some tech hasn't changed much in the last few hundred years." Rekha made herself talk. "Take breakers. The first incarnation was fuses. Copper and glass things that sometimes exploded. Today's use neither, but the same basic principles are in effect. When the circuit is overloaded, they stop conducting."

Venjie's face was in too much shadow to tell her expression. She made a small noise that didn't express much either. It didn't matter. The point of talking was to keep Rekha grounded.

"And we still use copper and other conductive metals same as they did in the beginning." Rekha popped in the last breaker and hit the reset switches. Overhead lights came on, then the board lights on the core. She booted up the nearest access station. "What's your access level?"

"Not high enough, but I saw the chief log in enough times." Venjie said as she punched at the keyboard. Access was granted immediately. She fed the data from her pad into the station.

Rekha used another station to check on other systems. Most were down. Radio transmitter was working, but the receiver was fried. Maybe. Information was spotty. She needed to take a physical look. "Checking on the transmitter," was all she said to Venjie before slipping out.

She was opening a maintenance panel to check wiring when the radio crackled on her handheld. "Where in the lost light did you go?"

"Repairing the transmitter." Rekha replied. "I did say where I was going."

"I obviously didn't hear you or I would have responded! You can't run off like that!"

"I've found the problem." Rekha ignored the outburst to give a brief report. "Repairs should take an hour. Maybe two."

There was a long quiet. "Estimated time to translate the message is three hours." Venjie's tone was cold. How long would she be angry about this? The rest of the day probably. Focus on something better. The receiver could be fixed. There. She focused on the task with vigor. Venjie could be mad, but the mission would go forward. She was focused enough that she completely forgot she should be on the lookout for hungry predators.

"I was wondering if you would notice me." Venjie spoke from where she was leaning against a wall. She smiled at Rekha's squeak and jump. "Good thing it's just me and not a battalion of crabs."

"Yea." Adrenaline pounding in her ears, Rekha frowned and gave the area a brief survey before turning back to her work. "Good thing you aren't a bunch of hungry crabs." She really needed to work on her awareness when she was working. It could get her killed on this awful planet.

Despite her fresh resolve, she lost herself in her work. She didn't come up for air until she was finished and was thoroughly startled by Venjie's quiet presence. Startled, yet pleased. Venjie shaking her head with what Rekha wanted to think of as a fond smile was a nice way to end a few hours of hard work. That the receiver worked was only icing on the cake. To top even the icing, the reaper wasn't waiting to eat them the moment they stepped out of the ship's carcass. Sunset found them safely back at base.

"Well done." Alandris applauded at the end of their report. "Let's go over the translated material."

It was called the Kharaa, and it would kill them all. The disease was a plague that crossed species, no matter kingdom or planet. It killed anything and everything, and the Precursors had been absolutely terrified of it. Imagining a race as technologically advanced as the Precursors unable to find a cure for this super bug was terrifying. Cold-sweat-inducing terrifying!

That was why there was a defense system to keep anyone from landing or leaving. The precursors didn't want the plague spreading. By the light, Rekha didn't want it spreading either!

"If they couldn't find a cure…" Rekha trailed off as she met Alandris' eye, saw the terror etching deep lines in her face. Not finding a cure wasn't an option. Alandris was _not _going to die on this backwater shithole! "We'll pick up where they left off. The disease research facility; we know it's pretty deep, but relatively nearby."

Her companions stared at her. She let them stare as she brought up her PDA and started working on her half-baked plan. "The facility is deeper than our moths can go. We'll need a modder, a modification station, to create the upgrades we'll need to explore. It's one of the few blueprints not in our files. We'll have to find one in the wreckage to scan. Venjie, we'll need you to highlight on the map where you've done extensive searching. We can assume the modder isn't there and try other areas."

"Right." Venjie swallowed. "And while we're searching for the modder, we'll keep an eye out for cave entrances or deep trenches."

"Maybe we should look for the cave that Bart Torgal said they were going to move to." Alandris suggested. "Might be an entrance to a deep tunnel system."

"Good." Rekha encouraged. "Keep thinking like that. We'll figure this out."

"There's a huge chunk of wreckage that I haven't been to yet. It's just at the moth's current crush limit. Gods, I've done salvage on what feels like a thousand chunks of wreckage." Venjie muttered. "But the idea of squeezing into another dark coffin scares the light out of me."

"Better that than being food for the crabs." Alandris managed a twisted grin.

"Ha!" Venjie snorted. "Yes. Anything but that. Okay, we've got our plan. Let's get to it."

* * *

A/N - If you haven't noticed already, I'm taking great liberties with lore, game mechanics, and geography. Try not to line everything up with the game :)

When I originally posted, I never expected to get a lot of reviews. Such is the bane of small fandoms, but wow. Thank you, anon, for giving me such a glowing one!


	8. To Be Blunt

Chapter 8  
To Be Blunt

There were a lot of reasons that Rekha had chosen a career as a prawn technician instead of operator. One, operators were often called to work long shifts, trapped inside their prawn. Entire days were often spent in the thing. Eating, pissing, shitting, being completely, utterly alone. Two, they often worked inside cramped, dark spaces, the threat of death at every corner. Places like asteroids and shipwrecks.

Rekha squinted at the wreckage in front of her. It was cold and lifeless, superheated alloys long since cooled in the dark water; what electronics had survived were now inert. Fish swam in and around the hulk. Their glowing bodies barely pushed back the mass of shadows that lurked within. The seamoth's lamps illuminated a fraction of the insides that could be seen through the tear in the hull. Inside would be a pitch dark mess. Everything would be topsy-turvy, doors would need cutting through; it'd be painfully easy to get lost or trapped under shifting debris. The walls would close in, she'd run out of oxygen, and the damn fish would eat her.

Fear fluttered in her chest, made her insides clench and outsides sweat. "You're doing this." Rekha scolded herself. "It has to be done."

She put on her mask, checked her gauges.

She climbed out of her moth and swam toward the wreckage. A hole in the side let her in. Shadows moved in the flashlight's beam. Metal groaned. Monsters howled. Fear slammed her heart into overdrive and set her lungs hammering. She needed out. She needed out now!

Twisting, she looked for the exit. It was gone. The shadows got thicker, darker, hungrier. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't see. She was going to die!

No.

No!

Anger grabbed hold of her panic and wrestled it into submission. She had work to do. There wasn't time to panic over nonsense. The idiotic bravado that had convinced her to crawl into this creaking terror box was gone, sure, but she could replace it with grim determination.

Rekha retrieved the flashlight that she had dropped and started a proper search despite her trembling hands. Broken equipment, dead terminals, and curious fish. A coffee mug. Crates full of more broken equipment. Ooh some nutrient bars. Peanut butter and vanilla flavors. Nice. Someone's hat and jacket. Rekha pocketed the clothes. Dry, they would be a nice addition in the habitat. Two PDAs.

No bodies. As usual. There were bones though, almost an entire skeleton, picked clean. Who had it been?

No time to mourn. Move on.

A dead end. She spent a good twenty minutes cutting a hole in the door to the next section. Another useless section. Another door to cut through. Crabs jumped at her. Dammit! She psi-punched them into the bulkhead. Heart pounding, she floated with her back to a wall. Chronometer said she'd been in there for over an hour. Light! Already?

She pushed off the wall to investigate a jumble of crates. Her scanner found chunks of a modder. Yes! It took another half hour of hunting and scanning, but she managed to piece together an entire blueprint. Success!

A new, freshly terrifying noise echoed through the water.

Her sixth sense said nothing unusual was out there. The usual small prey fish. Couple of small sharks.

The noise shrieked again.

What?

Carefully, as stealthily as possible, Rekha made her way to the exit and peeked out. She saw nothing for a while. Around the time her hands stopped shaking, she saw a strange shape moving through the water. It was almost humanoid with a head, torso, and arms. It had tentacles for propulsion, but its head was overly large and had two scythes for upper appendages. Like most of the locals, it had luminescence and its general movements were that of a hunter. Tremors made their way into her hands again.

She took a chance and swam out of the wreckage toward a cluster of giant bulbs for a closer look. What in the galaxy was that thing? It had no feel of life, no thoughts or semblance of them. For all her sixth sense could tell, it could be a moving rock. Her eyes tracked the hunter. What was it?

There was a brief swirl of light, much like a phasegate activation. The hunter vanished. Where it had been was a frenzy of bubbles. She cast her gaze in every direction and didn't see it. There were monsters down here that could _teleport_?

How could this planet possibly be getting worse?

* * *

Rekha passed on what she'd seen to her companions over dinner.

"It did _what_?" Alandris barked, fell to coughing.

"It effectively teleported." Rekha confirmed, glad that she'd regained control over her shaking limbs before coming home.

"Wait. Can we back up a lightyear and go over the fact that Rekha went to investigate wreckage by herself?" Venjie huffed.

Alandris pushed stray hair from her face. "Rekha, we had this conversation the other day! How did boarding the _Aurora_ not drive that home?"

"I took no unnecessary risks. It was a task that needed to be done."

"You could have been killed!" Venjie threw at her.

"I could be killed right outside this window," was Rekha's dry comeback.

Alandris wagged a furious finger at her. "That is not the point here, Rekha."

"I've heard you chastise more than a few prawn operators when they let their suits get damaged instead of following safety protocol." Venjie added.

"I'm not some reckless exo-head racing her prawn like a rebellious teenager because I've got cabin fever!" Rekha seethed. "I'm part of a crew on a desperate mission with an impossible timeframe. Both of you were busy with other projects. We don't have time for one of us to twiddle their thumbs just because it'd be safer to do something in pairs!"

"Rek-"

Her hand cut through the air. "No." She battled her fury to keep it safely within her own skull. "Our priority is to find a cure. And if one of us is expendable, it's not the doctor or the one with geology training." She was just an AWOL soldier. "I'm going to do everything in my power to find that cure and get us off this planet."

"Rekha…" puffed from Venjie, yet no further argument came.

Hot air hissed through her teeth, and she whirled, storming out of the room.

* * *

Rekha sighed at the view beyond the window. They were eating breakfast and about to embark on another long day in an endless string of long days. "It'd be nice to have gills, wouldn't it? No need to worry about constantly refilling O2 tanks or c-"

"Eugenics, like a lot of other weapons programs, were banned by the Charter for a reason!" Venjie's tone sizzled with an abrupt anger.

Rekha bit her tongue at the ferocity. Mere mention of eugenics and weapons programs got her angry this fast? She couldn't meet Venjie's sharp gaze.

Alandris blew her nose and spoke, voice awkward from her clogged sinuses and irritated throat. "Yes. But genetic manipulation in preventive medicine remains perfectly acceptable."

"Turning people into fish isn't the same as eradicating Huntington's disease."

"What about colonization?" Alandris pushed. "On otherwise uninhabitable rocks, simple genetic changes would allow humanity to spre-"

"No." Venjie refused to allow the topic. "We aren't having this discussion." She pushed her breakfast aside. "I'm going to prep my moth."

Heavy stomping took her from the room.

"You should tell her." Alandris prodded Rekha.

"Tell her I'm the product of a weaponized eugenics program? You heard what she said about eugenics debates. She thinks we're all monsters."

"You need to set her straight about that." Alandris didn't back down. "Like you did me."

"By fighting off a bigger monster, then breaking down in the middle of an alien jungle?" Rekha snorted.

Alandris shrugged. "Not that I'm eager to be the third wheel around here, but she needs to know so she can hurry up and get over it, and you two can stop all this awkward tension."

Rekha laughed. "I think you're confused. All the awkward tension is just me. She's told me several times what she thinks of my flirting."

"Has that been recent or was it back on the _Aurora _where you weren't looking for anything more than a few hours of fun?"

That gave her pause. On the _Aurora_ she'd never bothered to consider a relationship that was more than fun sex. A partner wouldn't like secrets, and anyone would run the moment they learned about Rekha's biology. Run, turn her in, both.

"I see." Alandris hummed. "To be blunt, because I understand how incredibly dense you are, Venjie likes you."

* * *

An hour later, Rekha went in search of Venjie, found her in one of the work rooms.

"Venjie?" Rekha spoke softly. "Could we talk?"

Venjie lifted her attention from the worktable. "Of course."

Rekha chewed her lip. This was a terrible idea.

"Rekha? What is it?" Concern laced her tone, made it soft and inviting. It lured Rekha into swallowing her fear and opening up.

"I have something important to tell you. There's no easy way to say it. I'll just have to lay it out and hope for the best."

"Have either of you seen m-" Alandris paused mid-word as she walked into the room. "Oh. Sorry. Am I interrupting?"

Venjie gestured at Rekha.

"I was about to tell Venjie that I," she sucked in as much courage as her lungs could hold. "That I'm a revised person."

Shock blew Venjie's eyes wide open, made her breath hiss. "What?"

"I am not Alterran, though I grew up in its territories. I am Delhian, a psionic soldier. Or, I was. I left Delhi several years ago, and I have no intention of ever returning." Rekha found her words coming out faster, as Venjie's expression shifted from disbelief to hurt to anger. "I'm sorry that I've been lying since we met. I've wanted to tell you for a long time, but… I've been too afraid."

"I don't believe you." Venjie's tone was cold.

Rekha used psi to lift a water bottle and shift it across the room. "It's true."

Silence stretched out, heavy and awful, slowly suffocating Rekha as she watched Venjie's anger solidify. Hate burned in her eyes.

Venjie suddenly whirled on Alandris. "You knew about this?"

Alandris nodded, a calm smile on her face. "If it wasn't for her revisions, I wouldn't be alive. It took a while, but I've come to trust her. Her psionics have proven rather useful on this gods-forsaken planet."

Venjie spat. "Delhian soldiers must be able to brainwash people now too, because I can't believe a true Martian would ever trust one." She gave Rekha a disgusted look. "Don't bother trying to get in my head. I've got cerebral shielding."

Cerebral shielding strong enough to block Rekha wouldn't fit in a tiny skull implant. Human bio-electrics weren't enough for the wattage that sufficient shielding would require. "I don't have any intention of it, Venjie."

"No." She growled. "You don't get to be that personal, _Dogar_. You may address me as Engineer Remus. Or Remus."

She managed to smooth her expression despite her crumbling heart. "Yes, Engineer Remus."

Venjie grew even angrier and stormed from the room. The sound of her seamoth engine whirring and speeding off made Rekha choke. She glared at Alandris. "Yes. Tell Venjie that I'm revised. She likes me. She'll get over it."

Contrition tightened Alandris' features. "I really didn't think she'd react like this."

Rekha closed her eyes, felt hot tears fall. "I need to be alone."

Alandris made noise as though to argue. She sighed. "You know where to find me if you need me," was said softly.

She stalked to her bed and collapsed in it to cry.

* * *

A/N - I actually had most of chapters 7 - 10 written months ago. They just needed a little filler and editing. It's been so long since I've worked with this fic! I hope I didn't make any weird mistakes. Lately, I've been working like mad to finish an original novel that I started a few years ago, and my head needed a break. This fic was exactly what I needed to relax :D


	9. Trapped

Chapter 9  
Trapped

"She's been gone too long," coughed Alandris.

Rekha sighed. "It's only been a day, old woman."

"Yes, little girl. A day. On this planet, where _every living thing wants to kill us._"

She'd been trying not to think about that.

"Check up on her."

"She's alive."

Alandris made an angry gesture. "Check on her."

Anger flared. "I can't do that without invading her privacy, Alandris!" She yelled. "You were there when she told me to stay out of her head!"

"Why must you be so stubborn?"

"Venjie's spent the most time alone _surviving _on this hellhole. The seamoth was fully charged. It's always stocked with two days' rations. She's fine."

Ferocity glared back at her. "At 48 hours on the dot, Rekha, you will reach out and check on her. End of discussion."

The next 20 hours were immeasurably stressful. Rekha kept glancing to the windows and mentally reaching out, but every time, Venjie remained kilometers away with no sign of returning. Damn their lack of long-distance comms. A few kilometers distance, a few meters of rock, even the vaguest anomalies could block a signal. Venjie would answer a status report. No matter how much she hated Rekha and Alandris now, the fact remained that they were stronger as a team. Venjie was angry and hurt, not stupid.

So when was she going to turn around and come back? They had work to do.

The cyclops wasn't going to build itself. Venjie wouldn't let Alandris die of this horrible disease. Would she? No. She wasn't that petty. Rekha wouldn't have such strong attraction to her if she was.

Rekha sipped at her cup of cold coffee. Forty six hours. She should be sleeping, not waiting up like a worried mother for a rebellious child to return home. Yet she was. And Venjie was as far away as the day before. In fact, she didn't seem to have moved. Had she built another habitat wherever she was? Wh-

"Is she on her way back yet?" Alandris asked from the doorway.

"No."

Alandris moved into the common area and slid into a chair. They waited together for the next two hours.

"Timer for Engineer Remus' return is up," chimed her PDA.

Rekha knew that Venjie wasn't close before she even reached out.

Alandris raised an eyebrow.

"What the hell do I even say? She's going to be furious." Rekha stalled.

"Hello usually works," was the dry response.

"Ugh!"

"What's your status? Are you hurt? Do you need help? Those are also standard." Alandris deadpanned.

Why was life so hard?

"Rekha." Alandris' tone was hard. "Check on her."

Fine. It wasn't like Venjie could hate her more. She reached out, found Venjie's mind, gently felt for a way in. The cerebral shielding buzzed an irritating static. She spent a careful minute getting around it.

Fear assaulted her.

She recoiled and had to get past the shield again. Ready for the fear, she let it sweep past her, and made contact. _Hello? _was her soft call. _I apologize for the intrusion, but we need a status update._

_Rekha? _shrieked at her. _By the Charter! Is that you?_

_Yes. Ven-Engineer Remus, you've been gone two days. Alandris asked me to check on you._

What sounded like terrible laughter came back. Rekha cringed.

_Again, I apologize for intruding. Just, please, give me a status update so I can p-_

_I'm trapped! _interrupted her. _There's a reaper out there. It chased me into this cave, gods, twenty hours ago! It won't leave! I ran out of power four hours ago. I've only got a couple hours of air left in my tanks. They weren't full when I stormed out of the habitat._ Venjie was spitting out words too fast, they were running together and blurring.

Rekha cut in, _Why are you already out of power?_ A fully charged power cell should keep a moth going for several days on standard use. Venjie was only a few hours away.

_I had to overuse the defense system. The reaper had me in its jaws, Rekha! It wouldn't let go until I'd used three full-power charges!_

Three charges. Reapers usually let them go after one. What was possessing this one?

_Rekha? Are you still there? By the Charter, how are you even talking to me? Is the shielding not… no the readouts are green._ A deep pause. _How?_

_Whoever sold you that implant failed to mention that it has serious limitations._

_But w-_ she cut off to shriek and whimper.

_What happened?_ Rekha demanded. She was reluctant to fully slip into Venjie's mind to tap her senses.

_You're in my head_, snapped at her. _Didn't you see?_

_I'm trying my best to respect your privacy, Engineer Remus. I… _she paused. _I only opened up a comm channel._

Several moments passed.

Rekha bit her tongue.

_The reaper roared into the cave and scared me. _Venjie sighed. _Please come help me._ The last was given softly.

_What's your location?_

A few minutes later, she had a good idea of where Venjie was. It'd take almost two hours to get there at max speed. Venjie had less than three hours of oxygen in her tanks.

"You were right." Rekha grumbled at Alandris. "She's in trouble."

"I figured that by the length of the conversation," snarked back.

Rekha huffed. "She's trapped in a cave by a rather persistent reaper. She overused the defense system, and she's on tank air."

Alandris rose as she did. "Okay. Where is she?"

"In the bulb zone near the weapon platform."

"That's over three hours away. How long does she have?"

"I'll have to push the seamoth." Rekha avoided the question. She grabbed several water bottles, cooked potatoes, and two med kits. "I'm going to take a spare power cell."

"How long does she have?"

Rekha checked her tanks. Half full. Good enough. "Long enough." She suited up, put her mask in the d-pocket along with the other emergency supplies. Seaglide and flashlight were already in there. "Seen the stasis rifle?"

"Not recently."

Damn. She grabbed the one creature decoy they'd managed to build.

Alandris grabbed her arm. "How long does she have?"

"Less than three hours."

"Shit." She let go. "Hurry up! What are you sitting around for?"

Rekha chose not to respond. She hopped into the waiting moth. _I'll keep you updated_.

_You better._ Alandris huffed.

The moonpool dropped her into the water, and she hit the throttle. The moth shot forward. She didn't divert course except for rocks and reefbacks. Fish and kelp banged into the shield. Her hands hurt with how tightly she gripped the controls. Get there in time, was her mantra. At the hour mark, in a quiet stretch of water, she checked in.

_I'm an hour out. How are you?_

_Gods, Rekha. You really don't have any trouble with this shield do you?_

_No. _She couldn't allow the effort to mince words.

_I'm still alive, if that's any sort of report. Reaper can't get at me, but it still won't leave._

_Did you steal its eggs or something?_

_I wish I had! It'd be a good reason for this problem!_

Rekha curved over a roll in the seabed.

_Do you have a plan?_ Venjie asked.

_I brought the decoy. If that doesn't work, I'll distract it while you get in my moth. Then I'll hop in yours._

_What? That's it? Then you'll be trapped!_

A shark leapt out of the sand. It couldn't get a grip, yet its hard teeth scraped loud enough to warn her that she'd have hull repairs to deal with later.

_Trapped with a fresh power cell. I'll be fine, Remus. I need to concentrate on steering. I'll check in when I'm in the vicinity._

Rekha gathered herself in time to narrowly avoid another shark. Damn aggressive fauna. The next hour was impossibly longer and more stressful than the last. Horrible scenarios ran through her head. The reaper getting into the cave somehow. Rekha not arriving in time and finding a breathless corpse. Not being able to distract the reaper adequately and it making a meal of Venjie while she was swimming to the other moth.

She wanted to scream. Maybe later, she told herself. If that reaper wanted a fight, she was more than willing to take it head on. She was prepared this time. Prepared and stronger. Weeks on this planet pushing her mental muscles by tracking survivors, then talking to Alandris, smacking irritating crabs and sharks and catching fish… On top of the actual training exercises that she'd worked on, because she knew that there'd come a time where she would have to face a leviathan again. It was a given on this planet.

Bright blue orbs appeared ahead. Finally! She veered around a hunting ampeel, giving the electric predator a wide berth. Where was the canyon that - yes. There.

Rekha touched Venjie's mind, breathed a sigh of relief that there was a live mind to touch. _I'm close._

_Finally! I've got twenty minutes._

_Be ready to run._

_Oh, I am._

She prepped the decoy and turned off the exterior lamps, brought the moth to a stop.

_Remus, may I see through your eyes?_

_Do I have a choice?_

Rekha sighed at the lack of trust. _Yes._

There was a long hesitation. _I suppose it'll help to see where you're going. Yes. You may._

Rekha fully slipped in, peering into the darkness, hearing Venjie pant, feeling her racing heart. Okay, yes. That outcrop was unique. Okay. She came back and hunted for the outcrop she'd seen. Very close. She reached for the reaper's presence. It was circling directly above Venjie's location, hungry, agitated, focused.

Painfully slowly, she eased the moth directly in view of Venjie and aimed it at the bulb forest. They'd provide some cover to dodge in if events went poorly. She got out and used the nearly silent seaglide to take her a good distance the opposite direction. No more time. She strapped the decoy to the seaglide.

_In three, I'll turn on the decoy._

_I'm ready._ Venjie gasped.

_Three. Two. One._ She flicked on the decoy.

The reaper roared. Another roar and it whipped in her direction. She let the seaglide go.

_Run for my moth. Now! Now! Now!_

Roaring furiously, the reaper was already over her head and catching up on the decoy. Venjie was almost across the canyon. Half her attention on the reaper, Rekha headed for the abandoned moth. She felt Venjie's sigh of relief and gave one of her own. Venjie was safe now.

_Stay along the seabed. Move slowly. Keep the lights off._

Roars echoed in the canyon. The reaper's presence started back their way. No! Too soon!

_Rekha?_

_No noise!_

The damaged seamoth chose that moment to let loose a stream of bubbles.

The reaper roared, its focus clear.

_Run! Go, go, go! _Rekha screamed.

Venjie hesitated. _What about you?_

_Go!_ Rekha slammed the fresh power cell in the abandoned moth and aimed a psychic yell at the reaper. Its motion stuttered. Venjie's moth darted into the darkness. Rekha hit the accelerator and put herself between reaper and Venjie. She turned the lamps on and yelled as loud as she could.

The reaper howled and charged at her.

She sped away. It chased. She darted in and out of caves, around every possible obstacle, and kept trying to psychically deter it. It refused to give up. The monster was set and determined to destroy the little shell and its soft insides. Dammit! She started to gear up a full psionic attack. No. There was half a seamoth in her way. It'd not only damage her moth, but halve the attack's effectiveness. Either lose the monster somewhere or get out and face it barehanded.

It appeared in front of her. What? How? Wh-

Metal shrieked as its powerful mandibles grabbed hold, sunk its impossibly sharp mandibles deep into the chassis.

"Let me go, you light deprived asshole!"

It roared and bit at her lamps.

She hit the defense system. A powerful electric field was discharged, zapping the monster and lighting up the depths. It didn't let go. Metal continued to shriek. Ten seconds later, the system was ready again. She hit it. Electricity sizzled in the darkness, but the reaper refused to give up its prey. The structural integrity of the seamoth dropped in half. Fine. Hand to hand it was. She jumped out of the moth.

While the reaper was busy finishing the destruction of her vehicle, Rekha focused her mind. She gathered her anger, her will to survive, and her righteous indignation that she just wanted to go home!

The moth died in a flurry of bubbles, and as soon as the reaper tossed its carcass aside, Rekha sent her psionic attack directly into its face. Water rippled in every direction. Blood drifted up. A slow blink passed across four eyes.

Her second attack landed as it shook off the first.

Her third was filled with simple animal rage. _Ahhh!_

There was a resounding _crack_. Teeth fell. Blood gushed upward. One eye blinked. Then two.

Rekha charged into its simple mind and started carving.

Long and low, a whine gurgled from the reaper. Its entire body shuddered, twisting back and forth, contorting in pain and confusion. A second whine followed. Three eyes blinked. Rekha noticed odd bumps covering its form. Pain and fear totally swamped its aggressive anger. It tried to get away. As it turned, the flickering light of her dead moth illuminated green sores along the white body.

The Carar.

Had the disease driven the reaper mad?

The reaper was sluggishly moving away. Her first reflex was to not let it go, to finish what _it_ had started. Her next was to let it go. Let it suffer the long, slow, painful death that the disease offered. Another pained whine came from the creature. Her heart ached at the sound. Dammit. She returned to the animal's mind, searched for the softest spot. It got nearly thirty meters away before she found it. There.

It twitched once and began to sink.

Damn this planet and its insane problems!

She watched the dead leviathan for a few moments before starting to swim for home. Home. The thought that she'd called the habitat home made her snort and remember that she'd promised to keep Alandris updated.

_Alandris._

_Rekha! Status update, now!_

_Venjie is on her way back. Reaper's dead. It was infected._

_The Carar?_

_Yes._

There was quiet for a while. Rekha saw an ampeel ahead and started the slow detour around. Should've brought a second seaglide. She had more than enough air to make it to the surface, and her tanks would recharge with enough time up there, but she was going to have to sleep in the open tonight. Swimming home was going to take a _long_ time.

_How are you? _Alandris asked softly.

_Tired._

_Going to sleep in your moth tonight? Got enough power?_

_No moth_, was her tiredly honest response. _Reaper destroyed it. Seaglide's gone too._

Alandris gasped, coughed. Strange how physical coughs came through the psi channel. _Have you told Venjie?_

_No._

_Tell her, you dumb bulkhead._

_Yes, doctor._ Rekha didn't think, just did as ordered. _Remus. Reaper's dead._

_Rekha! Rekha, are you okay? I … I heard your fight. I _felt _it. Gods, you're strong, aren't you? _Venjie's tone shifted from panicked to awed. It occurred to Rekha that she hadn't felt the cerebral shield.

_You turned off your shield._

Venjie laughed. _A perfect waste of energy, wasn't it?_

_Yes._

_You have no sense of humility, do you?_

Rekha yawned and wondered if she should aim for the mountain. Sleep in the alien facility. Would she get there before she fell asleep?

_I don't boast about my psionic strength, only my prowess in bed._ Another yawn.

_You sound tired. Are you okay?_

_Adrenaline crash. I didn't sleep much last night, and I was still awake when Alandris made me check on you. That fight took a lot out of me. Oh, and I'm swimming for the mountain._

_You're what? _squeaked at her.

Rekha sighed. Right. Alandris had said to tell her. _Reaper wrecked the moth. No seaglide. I'm swimming for the mountain._

_No, you're not_. Venjie barked, _I'm coming back._

_Don't. Seamoth is a one-person vehicle. There's no point._

_I'm coming back. Where are you?_

_Bu-_

Venjie cut her off. _Where. Are. You?_

Too tired to keep arguing, the flashlight was pulled out. _Above the bulbs. I have my flashlight on._ She kept swimming. If Venjie felt she needed to keep her company all night, then so be it. Artificial light cut through the darkness five minutes later. Rekha flashed her light a few times. The moth lamps turned in her direction and easily caught up with her.

_Hello. _Rekha gave a little wave.

_Don't 'hello' me. Get in._

Rekha blinked. She squinted into the tiny cabin. _You have noticed the distinct lack of a second chair, yes?_

The hatch opened. Venjie gestured angrily. _Get in. There's room if you remove your tanks first. You can sit in my lap._ Venjie must have already stowed her tanks and mask because her face was uncovered and wearing an unhappy frown.

_There's not r-_

_Get. In._

Why were the only other people on this planet so damn commanding?

_Yes, Engineer Remus_.

Her flippers were awkward to tug off, and she spun in the water twice before managing to stow them. She paused to yawn. Spots erupted in her vision. Sleep sounded absolutely amazing right about now. Get the gear off, she reminded herself. Can't fall asleep here or Venjie will get angry and break both their necks dragging Rekha inside.

She took several long breaths, held the last, and stripped off her tanks. They went into her d-pocket, and she swam to the moth. It looked as small as it had a minute ago. She slid her legs in. Hands guided her down until she was planted squarely in Venjie's lap. Her head brushed the top of the cabin.

"Get the hatch."

Rekha couldn't comfortably twist to do it. She used psi to pull it down and turn the lock. She stowed her mask.

Water dripped from her to the moth's floor.

Arms were suddenly around her middle, squeezing tight, pressing Venjie into Rekha's back. "I'm so sorry," was whispered against her shoulder. "By the Charter, I misjudged you, Rekha."

She made a noise, but couldn't form words.

"You fought a reaper for me."

"I won't have to fight them anymore. I found the soft spot." Rekha said.

The arms around her stiffened. "The soft spot?"

"I know how to kill them."

"You can kill them with your mind," wasn't a question.

"Yes."

Slowly, Venjie relaxed into Rekha's frame. "Going by the stories, I always imagined that a telepathic intrusion would be excruciating."

"If you'd been actively blocking me, forcing my thoughts into your head would've given you a headache," was her factual reply. "I was careful not to overload your shield generator."

"You know just how to make a girl feel comfortable," grumbled into her back.

"My apologies, Remus. I'll keep my thoughts to myself from now on."

Glowing fish darted across her vision. A crabsquid considered their moth, and Rekha encouraged the concept that they were an odd rock and not worth investigating. It squirted away.

"It didn't feel like anything at all."

What? Rekha couldn't stop a yawn. "What didn't?"

"You in my head."

Oh.

"I think I felt something after you asked to look through my eyes, a sort of pressure."

Standard experience. Rekha caught sight of an ampeel lurking at the edges of their lamplight.

"Dammit, Rekha, would you stop?"  
Stop what? She twisted to try and look at Venjie. "What?"

"Stop being so damn accommodating!" growled at her. "I tell you to stop using my given name, and you do. I tell you to stay out of my head, and you do until I disappear for two days, then apologize for asking if I'm okay. I say that your responses are making me uncomfortable _and you stop talking_."

"Which means you want me to keep being accommodating by abiding by your order to _not_ be accommodating." Rekha huffed. "Would you make up your mind?"

Venjie stiffened again. "Could you force me to?"

"No! I can do a lot of things, but I can't force you to think or believe something that you don't want to. But I'd love it if you would. This back and forth over whether you trust me isn't pleasant." Irritation, hurt, and tiredness made her sharp. "I'm an H-class psionic, trained in the Delhian military. I'm capable of hurting and killing with my mind, but I don't like doing it. I didn't like being a soldier. I don't want the future that Delhi had planned for me!"

Rekha's breath rushed in and out of her lungs. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. "Alandris is my friend. You were my friend. I wanted more than that with you, but since you obviously don't, could we return to neutral crewmates? Please stop making me feel like a monster. I'm not one of the villains in your parents' war stories. I left Delhi and will never go back." She sniffed. Hot tears spilled over her cheeks. "Neither of you would even know I was psionic if my abilities didn't help keep us alive."

Venjie didn't seem to have anything to say to that, so Rekha continued quietly crying and watching the glowing, deadly life swimming around them.

"Can you reach the controls?" eventually came from Venjie. "I can't see, and we should get moving."

"Um." Rekha shifted, got distracted by the fact that Venjie's arms remained tight about her middle.

"Rekha?"

Her lips moved. She stared. One of her hands moved to touch what her eyes didn't believe.

"That's my arm."

"You're hugging me."

Venjie heaved a breath. "I'm trying to convince my head what my heart knows. Can you drive or not?"

Her pulse fluttered at what Venjie might or might not be implying. Controls, where were they? It was awkward, yet doable. She got the moth turned about. "Yes. I can drive."

"Think you can stay awake to make it home?"

At normal speed, almost four hours? Her eyelids felt heavier thinking about it. "Probably not."

"Take us to the mountain."

"Yes, captain."

"Smartass," sounded like Venjie might have smiled.

Short a distance away as the mountain was, by the end of the half hour drive, Rekha could barely keep her eyes open. She did manage to sense the local leviathan and give it a wide berth. It never noticed them. In the shallows, she parked the moth and let her head bob.

"Up, you lump. We aren't sleeping like this. I won't be able to walk tomorrow if we do." Venjie waved a hand at the hatch.

"This was your idea." Rekha grumbled back.

"Just climb out."

She did and waded out of the surf, eyed the moonlit beach for pesky crabs. Venjie's touch on her arm startled her.

"Come on."

She followed behind, half an eye on the beach, the other half drooping asleep. Damn these last two days had been exhausting. Her feet tripped as they stepped from mobile sand to solid metal. The precursor facility. She frowned up at the giant weapon.

Inside, despite the lack of forcefield, was blissfully free of crabs. Living crabs. Mechanical ones skittered about on their routes to keep the place maintained. Venjie guided them to a corner that was neither dark nor comfortable looking, just like the entirety of the facility. Why was there lighting on nearly every surface? What purpose was there in that much wasted resource? The exterior didn't glow. Why the interior? Did the precursors enjoy it that much?

A bedroll appeared in Venjie's hands. "I always keep one on hand," was explained as she smoothed it out on the floor. She sat on the end of it. "Come on."

Rekha sat as well. Her eyes closed.

"You did all the hard work today. You get to lie down. I'll sit up."

Okay.

"Use me as a pillow, will you? I know you're a side sleeper."

Rekha chose not to think about what was happening. The energy cost was too high, and her reserves were too low. Head met soft thigh. "Good night."

Fingers touched her temple. "Sweet dreams, Rekha."

* * *

A/N - *magnificent laughter* I bet you didn't expect to get a slew of updates in one day, did you? Nope. You didn't. (neither did I)


	10. The Scary Psionic

Chapter 10  
The Scary Psionic

Morning was mostly finished by the time Rekha opened her eyes. She sat up stiffly, everything aching.

"Good morning," greeted her.

Rekha flinched as the previous day flooded into her.

Venjie was rubbing her thigh with a relieved expression. "Gods, I didn't want to wake you; you deserved your sleep, but my leg has been cramped up for hours."

Rekha rolled her shoulders and stretched silently. She had no idea what to say about the previous day's events. "Thank you," was what she managed.

Rubbing stopped. Venjie's expression was expectant.

Out of words, she pulled breakfast from d-storage, silently offered some. With a sigh from Venjie, it was accepted. Rekha nibbled, both famished and not hungry at all. Venjie stared at hers. Mechanical crabs skittered past on their high-priority assignments.

"My legs are going to be numb again by the time we get home," puffed out of Venjie.

"What?" Rekha squinted. "Why?"

"We should really look into designing a two person moth."

"Don't you have a seaglide on you? I'll use that to get home."

Venjie's brow wrinkled. "Don't be stupid. A glide will take forever."

The other day all Venjie seemed to want was as much space as possible from Rekha. Since last night, she was almost clinging. It didn't make sense. And Rekha was too emotionally drained to try and process. "I'm rested and capable of defending myself again. There's no need to pack both of us into the moth."

Tortured amber eyes squinted at her. "If you were fitted with cerebral tech like back during the wars, that reaper would've been a pile of mush the moment you were in range, wouldn't it? Gods, you could've taken on a whole squad of reapers, couldn't you?"

H-class with boosters were an army unto themselves. With the modern boosters that Delhi was illegally improving...

Rekha watched a mechanical crab scurry right up a wall, open a panel in it and poke at the dark interior. The panel was closed, and the crab moved along the wall to another. How nicely simple that life was. She wanted to go back to repairing and maintaining the _Aurora's _fleet of prawn suits.

"Or are you still hiding things from us?"

Rekha stood. "I'll take the long way back."

Venjie stiffened as though readying herself for an attack, yet Rekha merely walked toward the exit. "You're going to _swim_?" squawked out.

Rekha kept moving, the strange metal floor cold under her bare feet.

"Rekha!"

Bright sunlight assaulted her, and she had to shield her eyes. An organic crab tried next. She batted it aside with psi. From the d-pocket, she started pulling her equipment. Her tanks were at a third. Hadn't she had half last night? Dammit. That would only get her to the shallows. She'd have to find some place to perch and wait for the tanks to refill.

"You can't be serious," barked at her. Venjie had followed and moved in front of her. She tried to block Rekha's path.

Rekha shouldered past, tried to. A hand grabbing her bicep stalled her. "Why is everything a fight with you?" Rekha complained at Venjie's hand.

"You're the one trying to do something stupid," argued with her.

It really was. Rekha watched the wind play with the plants around them, the sound of it nostalgic, reminding her of the colony moon she'd grown up on. Maybe she should wait here on the beach while her tanks filled. A few hours delay wasn't an ultra problem.

"Crewmates protect each other, you stubborn bulkhead." Venji huffed, but her grip didn't budge. "I'm not going to let you swim back to the habitat."

Rekha met her gaze with a hard one of her own. "Then let me use your seaglide."

"We're both going in the moth," glared back.

"I'm not sitting on your lap for three hours."

Venjie rolled her eyes. "This is ridiculous. I'm willing to put up with the numb legs to get us both back in a timely manner! Are you suddenly afraid of me now?" She sneered.

"Yes!"

Venjie's hand jumped away.

"I know!" Anger rose up. "I'm the scary psionic who can turn the world upside down, but you…" Rekha shook her head. "I can't defend myself against how you make me feel. Three hours trapped in that tiny moth with no space between us, it'll drive me mad."

Emotions swirled in lovely amber eyes. Lashes dipped and sparkled in the sunlight. Rekha's heart leapt into her throat as the sunlight made the amber glow again.

"Okay, Rekha. I'll follow behind you. But only until we get to a kelp forest, and we can rig you a tow harness." Venjie held up the seaglide. "Do your tanks need to recharge first?"

Numb, she accepted the glide and nodded.

"I'll go radio Alandris that we'll be on our way in a couple hours." She turned and waded into the water, slipped under to enter the moth.

Rekha stared after. Birdfish swooped in front of her, brought her gaze to gathering storm clouds. An evening storm was brewing. Damn. How long had it been since she'd been on the surface long enough to endure a storm? Or watch the sun set?

What would it be like to sit and watch a sunset with Venjie? A Venjie who wasn't afraid of her? Who might cuddle close and sigh against her shoulder as the stars came out? Who wouldn't hurt so damn much to care about?

She turned away from the view and set her air tanks against a tree, made sure the refill switch was turned on. Might as well get some stretching in. Sandy footsteps approached, and she stoutly did not look in their direction. She did use psi to pick up a crab. Angrily, she slammed it into a rock. Its shell cracked and juicy insides oozed out. A shocked gasp came from behind her. Senseless murder wasn't like Rekha. Crabs normally enjoyed a fairly tame toss if they weren't on the menu. She looked away from the carcass.

How about upper body exercises. She imagined some intense cramping later from being tugged behind a glide for hours. Silent company began a similar routine. Nope. Too close. Rekha decided it was time for a run. Once they'd expanded the base she'd had long corridors to run in, but it wasn't the same as doing it outside, under the blazing sun. She found the path that went uphill.

Her legs and lungs were burning by the time she reached the strange alien arch hidden in a cave near the peak. Alandris and Venjie had both talked about it. Rekha was as clueless as them about its purpose or how to activate it. Some sort of religious setup? Venjie had thought it looked like a phasegate. Where would it lead?

Chittering warned her of incoming crabs. How many could there possibly be on this island? Psi picked one up and carried it with her out to the path. She carefully bent at the edge, where the sharp cliff went right to the water. The crab made a tiny splash. Its friends followed.

Her air tanks' gauges were nearly full when she returned. She stretched and sat in the shade to guzzle water. She was pulling out dried kelp to eat when her feet complained. There was blood on the sand. Cuts on her feet. Dammit. Shouldn't have run in bare feet. She scowled. Should have thought to bring her shoes.

Irritated, she washed her feet in the surf, inspected them for any real damage. Nothing too serious. "Ow!" she hissed at a shock of pain. There was something embedded.

"Are you hurt?" Softly asked, the question was almost unheard.

"Nothing serious."

She couldn't seem to twist right to see what was in her foot.

"Do you need help?"

"No."

A thorn? No. Nothing here had thorns. Maybe a piece of crab shell. Tiny.

"Rekha."

She tried closing her eyes and probing with psi. Ah. There. Little triangle of something. She pulled it out, held it to her eyes, still couldn't tell what it had been. It didn't even make a splash.

"There's blood." Venjie worried. "Rekha, you…"

A fin cut through the water. Some sort of shark coming to investigate. She pushed it away. The medkit in her d-pocket was retrieved, sealant sprayed over her injured soles. She bit her lip at the hiss of pain.

"My tanks should be full by now." Rekha announced, not looking in Venjie's direction as she rose. Her feet shrieked their complaints. "I'm going to eat then go."

There was a long sigh.

She returned to the shade and her tanks, ate the kelp, then some cured fish. More water. Her feet were starting to throb. Her limbs remained weak from exhaustion and stress. What energy she'd had, she'd used up in her desperate run. She could use a nap. Maybe a few hours in the moth with Venjie wouldn't be _that bad_.

Venjie was awkwardly standing a feet meters away, gazing at the ocean. Her wet hair glimmered in the sunlight. What would it be like to tangle fingers in that hair? How w-

No. Not getting in the moth. Not sitting in Venjie's lap for three and a half excruciating hours. Rekha rolled her shoulders. She'd rather endure the longer trip by seaglide.

Tanks were shrugged into place. Fins were tugged on despite her feet's loud complaints. Mask sealed fine, gauges checked out, air flowed well. She slapped her way to the water, nodded at Venjie when she turned, and turned the glide on.

A half hour in, her hands ached. By the end of the hour, they were cramping rather painfully, and she had to stop. Venjie pulled alongside. She gestured with concern.

Rekha shook her head. She stretched and flexed her hands, rotated her shoulders and neck, wished she was anywhere except this planet. Only a couple hours to a kelp forest. Then it would be a short trip in a harness.

She barely got another ten minutes before stopping once more. Her hands were screaming and twitching, slipping from their grip on the glide. Rekha glanced at Venjie in her moth. She eyed her hands. They trembled. The kelp forest was at least another hour away by glide. Dammit.

The hatch on the moth opened. Venjie stared at her.

Dammit! If she could propel herself with psi, she'd do that until she dropped from exhaustion before climbing into Venjie's lap! She shoved the glide away and started swimming. The moth darted into her path. Venjie gestured angrily. Rekha tried to go around, yet Venjie blocked her. Psi moved the moth out of her way. It was a feat she'd never be able to do out of water -too much mass- even this was a ton of effort, yet she reveled in the shocked expression on Venjie. Absolutely worth the pinnacle headache it caused.

Half an hour later, she was barely a kilometer closer to base. Light, this would take her til morning! Her shoulders and legs burned. Shouldn't have gone on that run. She floated and stared at the elusive beacon proclaiming how far home still was. Above her, a giant reefback groaned its way through the water. Below her, Venjie's seamoth waited. Venjie didn't look at her.

Dammit.

Rekha started the awkward process of removing her fins. Sharp pain assaulted her, and it was more difficult than ever. Had her feet swollen? Alandris was going to rip her a new hole when saw what Rekha had done to herself.

She rapped on the seamoth's hull. Venjie looked up, expression hard, eyes dark. The hatch opened, and she watched Rekha remove her tanks. Rekha slid into the moth. Venjie's hands guided her, then settled on her thighs. No tight hug this time. Rekha's heart bumbled, in disappointment, in hope, for the simple act of touching Venjie.

Her mask was stowed and she set the moth on a course for home. The trip was as awkward and emotionally challenging as she had expected. She was ultra exhausted by the time the magnetic arms brought the moth into the moonpool.

Alandris was waiting, the smell of cooked food a welcome bubble around her. Worried eyes roamed over both. They softened a mote after their inspection. "I'm glad you two made it back safely. Get cleaned up. Dinner will be ready soon."

Rekha and Venjie went to the hygiene closet, took silent turns, then Venjie stopped Rekha from climbing the ladder up to the bedroom. "I'll toss you down your clothes." She gave a meaningful look at her angry red feet.

Rekha nodded.

Clothes were dropped to her. She took them to the closet, stripped, rinsed off with a little fresh water, and got dressed. Her suit was hung to dry. It could wait to be cleaned. She gingerly padded her way to the common room, had to check if she was leaving a trail of blood, because it hurt that much. Strange that she wasn't.

"What did you do to your feet?" The doctor demanded as soon as she saw Rekha limp in.

From where she was already sitting at the table, Venjie frowned.

"I went for a run while my tanks refilled."

Alandris' brow tightened. "You ridiculous, idiotic bulkhead! You could have been back hours ago _and_ avoided hurting yourself if you'd gotten in the seamoth to start with! Sit down and let me take a look."

Her inspection wasn't as gentle as it could have been. Rekha winced. "I pulled out a shard and washed them in the water."

"There's sand in them. We'll have to scrub off the sealant and clean these better. This one looks particularly deep." Alandris said. Her tone was hard. "Seriously, what were you thinking?"

"I was upset. I needed the exercise."

In her peripheral, she saw Venjie's mouth tighten. Alandris' irritation took on a note of worry. She glanced at Venjie, back to Rekha. She sighed and rose, washed her hands. "Let's eat."

Alandris had put together a soup. It was thick, pleasantly creamy, and hot. Rekha's exhausted body crooned at the warmth that filled her belly. She summoned the energy to compliment. "This is nice."

"Thank you." Alandris smiled. "I had a stroke of genius and finished that blender you were working on."

Rekha nodded her appreciation.

"The texture is a good change." Venjie said quietly.

Alandris beamed and waited a while before addressing another topic. "What were you doing in that trench, Venjie? Anything in particular?"

Venjie nodded. "Yes. I'd remembered seeing a particularly deep chasm, and I was investigating. I got in a few scans before the reaper showed up. There's a tunnel. It goes deep. Maybe deep enough."

Deep dark tunnel a hundred meters under water, all tight spaces and new horrors? Rekha shuddered and set her spoon down, appetite spoiled.

"Find a bone in the soup?" Alandris asked.

"No."

She frowned.

Rekha made little ripples in the bowl. She managed to bring another spoonful to her lips.

"Alandris, have you ever noticed how quiet Rekha gets when she has to go somewhere or do something that involves small, dark spaces?"

Alandris hummed. "Now that you mention it. Yes."

She forced another spoonful down.

"Just mentioning the tunnel makes her uncomfortable." Venjie said. "A tunnel big enough to fit this entire hab in."

Rekha ground her teeth. Why did Venjie feel the need to talk about her like this?

Venjie's fingers drummed on the table. "So why did she go to that wreck by herself?"

"I think I remember hearing you say how scared you were to go in yourself." Alandris said.

"Oh."

Heavy silence followed that.

Rekha sucked down the last of her soup. "Thank you for dinner, Alandris." She stood and ignored the roar of pain in her feet. Almost, she swayed and limped heavily as she took her dish to the wash bin. "I'm going to clean my injuries."

She felt Venjie's eyes until she passed through the doorway.

* * *

A/N - and that, friends, is the end of today's slew of updates. I hope to get more out soon, but life is ... life.


	11. Stubborn and Childish

Chapter 11  
Stubborn and Childish

"You might be the most blunt person I've ever met." Venjie mentioned as Rekha was busy taking inventory on what was still needed for the cyclops. Yesterday's drama had set them back too much. She had to catch up today.

"What's the point in being coy? If I don't need to say it, I don't. If I do, people know what I want and where I stand." Rekha grumped. "I wish more people would do me the same courtesy."

Venjie stared at her, a long, studious motion that had Rekha squirming.

"What?"

"I'm not sure I'm brave enough to be that blunt."

Rekha shrugged. "Then you'll be left wondering what if." She rose on sore feet. "I need to get to work. We're still short a few materials for the cyclops."

Lithium. They were always short on lithium. Titanium was easy, with wreckage everywhere, though rather tiresome. Cutting salvage into transportable pieces, hauling it, dragging it to the fabricator, then slowly feeding it into their not-industrial-sized equipment took hours. The rarer mineral could only be found at depths greater than 200m. And megafauna tended to roam near the richest deposits.

Sure, Rekha could kill the reapers now, could push away the smaller pests, could probably defend against the warpers. That required being alert and ready while someone else did the drilling with the prawn. She wasn't sure if it was okay to ask Venjie for help.

"Lithium mining?" Venjie asked.

"Yes."

"I'll come with you."

She eyed Venjie. Moments like these made Rekha wonder if Venjie was telepathic and had been reading her thoughts. Not possible. But still… "I thought you had other projects planned today."

"Building the cyclops takes priority, and mining is a two-person job."

"Okay," she acceded. "I'll be ready within the hour. I'll take first shift in the moth." It was easier to jump out of, and she could survey the area better. She could scare away the predators for a while. Reapers might show up when she was in the prawn, and she'd be too focused on her work to notice. Venjie might not either until it was too late and…

"It'll go much faster if I do all the mining while you keep the predators away. We'll just burn up a couple power cells if I'm using the moth's defense for it," was said so matter-of-factly that it was hard to believe it was Venjie speaking. Was this the same woman who hated Rekha for simply existing?

Slapping a beat against her ribs, her heart tried to make a big deal out of it. Nonsense. Venjie was also a practical engineer. Her no-nonsense tone said she was making the best of the situation and using the resources at hand. If there was anything to hope for, it was that Venjie would treat Rekha like she used to, a good -if annoying- crewmate.

"It will go faster." Rekha agreed.

There wasn't a debate on location. The best lode for lithium hadn't been drained yet. Unfortunately, it was in the same bulb zone where Rekha's pod had sunk. She spent the entire trek there gathering her courage, then feeling left down when there wasn't a reaper to greet them. In fact, the whole area seemed like a child's playground with the floaty bulbs and fluorescent colors. Not scary at all.

With that thought, her mind drifted to the other bulb zone near Venjie's tunnel. The one where the bulbs were big purple fungus-like things that grew up from thick stalks. Scanners said they were edible. The spoiled-milk taste said they weren't.

They needed to give these places proper names. Their PDAs were adding data to the map that Alandris had begun to compile. They could give these distinct biomes names. This small zone could be Bulb Zone A, because it was the first they had run into. And the larger one with the spoiled-milk flavored fungi could be Bulb Zone B. There was the Safe Shallows where Venjie had had the luck to crash land, the Crash Zone that still pulsed with radiation though Venjie had plugged up the leaks in the drive core, Red Grass Zone, Mushroom Forests A and B, and…

Rekha shouldn't be in charge of naming things. Creativity in her hands was wasted outside of machines. Light, she missed the simple days of fixing exosuits, sometimes helping other departments with their maintenance workloads, and not worrying about shelter, food, clean water, what was going to attack her next, or if her only friends might die of an alien disease.

Shame at getting distracted had her sitting up and doing an area scan. No sharks, they'd all… gone into hiding? What? She broadened her search, discovered a reaper. Was it the same as that first one? Irritation, instead of fear, was her first reaction. _Go away_, she grouched at it. Not that it had the capacity to understand, but it felt good to vent. _I'm tired of fending you monsters off._

Its movements stalled.

_You don't need to investigate. Go away, and I won't have to hurt you._

The creature spun around and sprinted out of her range. Had it… had it understood? She'd intended to use suggestion as she did with sharks, not words. Or was it only a basic understanding of cause and effect? It recognized her mental voice and associated it with pain? How did it know what direction to flee in?

"Rekha?" Venjie's voice over the comm had her jumping in surprise. "I'm taking a break."

She coughed, did another quick scan that found the reaper still in fast retreat. Ultra strange. "I read you. It's clear if you want to stretch your legs. I'm going to." She slid gear on, struggled with her fins and sore feet, and popped the hatch open. Dense, cold water greeted her. She shivered at the sensation of being trapped and forced herself into a swim to combat it.

Twenty minutes were spent building up a sweat. She let herself sink to the top of a green bulb. The things were actually floating gas sacks held down by vines. Midday, even at 300 meters, the water wasn't dark, yet the bulb glowed under her butt. What was the purpose? Why did most everything down here glow? Maybe she should have studied botany. Oh well. She shook her head, settled on being thankful that there was light to drive back the terrifying darkness. Mining in the dark was at the bottom of her list of things to do.

She decided it was time to get back in the moth. Needed to unload first. She signaled to Venjie, then ascended to depth safe enough to open her suit and assume the position. Why couldn't moths have a hygiene seat? Cold water and pressure assaulted her, nearly plugged her up from the shock. She managed to keep control and release. Fish swarmed the solid waste. Disgusting. She swam a meter away, kicked at fish that followed.

Hopefully, Venjie didn't notice the swarming creatures and put two and two together. It was embarrassing to not have an ounce of privacy. Stupid backwater planet! Still complaining, she cleaned up, pulled her suit back on, and entered her moth.

Venjie returned a few minutes later, and they went back to work. The remainder of her shift was quiet. A hefty sum of lithium was acquired, and they cheered when the PDAs agreed that it was enough to build the cyclops. A good spot was chosen for the mobile bay to fabricate the large vehicle and set to do its job. Its little drones whirred into action. Twenty minutes of watching them fabricate the nose of the frame, Rekha grew bored and started on the evening meal. The drones would take almost thirty hours to finish. There was a whole freighter worth of work she could do in the meantime, like gather materials for the upgrades.

* * *

Thirty hours later, they stepped inside to find the sub's interior was more cramped than a bar on New Years. With dimensions of 54 by 14 by 12 meters, it wasn't small, yet most of the interior was filled with the engine and a vehicle docking bay. The lower level was mostly storage and walkway. With a docked prawn, the lower level was effectively cut in half.

Its single hygiene facility was little more than a cramped closet located in the lower level. There was a tiny area between control room and vehicle access that they dedicated for sleeping. While Venjie and Rekha returned to the habitat to prep plants and materials for transfer to cyclops, they left Alandris to fill the cyclops with furniture.

When they came back with their first load, Rekhat thought that Alandris had done a fine job with the limited space. A great job fitting essentials like some work space, chairs, and needed equipment. Not such a great job with the bed situation.

"There's only two beds here." Venjie noted. One a single, the other double.

Alandris shrugged. "No idea how to reprogram the builder to make bunks anchored to the wall. We can't afford to give up garden space for a third bed. Best I could do. Being the senior crew here, I've claimed the single. You two get the double until Rekha can figure out a design change."

"I don't have time for that kind of work." Rekha argued.

"You can't be serious," Venjie complained at the same time.

"I'm taking the single." Alandris repeated.

Horror shifted Venjie's features, and hurt stabbed hard in Rekha's chest.

"This isn't one of the ways I imagined getting you into my bed," Rekha leered, "But I'll take it."

Disbelief gaped at her. "Do you ever think of anything else?"

"Different techniques I'd use on you."

Venjie threw her hands up and stomped to the ladder, slid down and started angrily transferring items into storage. A minute later, the hatch slammed with her exit.

"Do you do that on purpose or is it a reflex?" Alandris questioned.

Anger puffed. How dare she? This was her fault!

"If it helps, I am sorry about the bed situation."

"If you were sorry, you'd have announced that one of us could have the single bed." Rekha sniped.

Steady and calm, Alandris stared back at her. "Because the healthy ones should have to share a bed with the dying woman? Neither of you are sick. I'd like to keep it that way."

Fury died, tears threatening to replace it. Dammit!

Crying was useless. Get to work. Pocketing her emotions, she went back to transporting supplies aboard the cyclops. Talk during dinner was stilted. It consisted only of what was left to be done and how early they would leave in the morning. Nothing was said after. Chores were finished quickly, and the crew silently found their individual beds. Rekha tried to enjoy the privacy and space as best she could. She probably wouldn't experience it again for a long while.

* * *

Rekha was awake before the morning alarm. She hadn't managed to get more than a couple hours sleep and rose when she grew sick of staring at the ceiling. Breakfast was put together for the crew. She performed a last walkthrough of the habitat, triple checking that everything was in low-power quiet mode, that bulkhead doors were sealed. It could be weeks before they came back.

If at all.

She fabbed extra rolls of rubber and mesh before the others rose, took the blankets off her bed after they vacated the room, and mentally prepared herself to sleep on the floor of the cyclops. The morning's meal was as uncomfortable as dinner. Rekha reported her diligence and announced that she would wait for them aboard the cyclops.

Course already set, all she had to do was warm up the engines and perform pre-launch checks. "Welcome aboard, captain." She greeted Alandris with a mock salute.

It'd been intended as humor. Darkened eyes said it shifted Alandris' mind to the fact that with the deaths of everyone else, she essentially was acting captain.

Grief lowered her head and her tone. "I'm sorry, Alandris. I meant it as a joke."

Alandris sighed and touched Rekha's shoulder. "I know." She mustered a smile. "But if I have to be acting captain, then I get the good chair."

Rekha nodded. "Of course, captain ma'am."

Alandris chuckled and made her way to the ship's diagnostics station. The chair's cushioning hissed slightly as it accepted her weight.

Without speaking or meeting Rekha's eye, Venjie went to the station on the opposite wall and looked over the engine's readouts. "Pre-launch checks complete?"

"Yes, Remus."

"Engine readouts are green."

Rekha looked at Alandris.

"Diagnostics read green. Take us out, pilot." Alandris waved grandly.

Pilot. The one who got to stand all day on feet that still hadn't finished healing. The one who got to deal with the pressure of not crashing into anything or letting a reaper hear them or…

"Engine powering up." The ship's voice intoned. Light, that was the worst voice any programmer had ever come up with. Deep, unnervingly so, with a gutteral undertone that served no purpose except to remind her that the voice was digitally generated. Stupid Alterrans.

Vibration hummed through her aching feet as the engine wound up.

"Ahead standard." It announced in its awful baritone.

When they stopped, she was going to look into changing the ship's voice.

Half an eye on the sonar readouts, half checking every direction that the front glass bubble allowed, half on the three cameras she could flip through, and a psi probe constantly scanning for leviathans, Rekha guided the cyclops. As planned, she aimed them for an area that Venjie hadn't explored despite its closeness. Sonar said the dropoff was 100 meters nearly straight down into darkness.

Forty meters down, and creepy plant arms came into view. They spread out radially from a central stalk and glowed a disconcerting white. As the ship passed, the arms suddenly moved, curling inwards towards a pinkish center. It looked like a mouth.

Predator plants now?

Shivering, she eyed the stalk as it thickened from a few centimeters to nearly a meter with blood-red pustules.

"Blood kelp." Venjie breathed. "These things are in the trench near the floating island. I investigated long enough to harvest the oil for benzene. It was the most frightening place I've been on this awful planet. Although, if I'd come down here in just a moth, this would take the cake." They began to see more blood kelp in the distance, a small forest taking shape. Ghostly fish darted among them. "Scanner thinks those moving arms are gathering microorganisms for energy. And anything else small or dumb enough to enter the mouth. Creepiest plants I…"

"This ecological biome matches seven of the nine preconditions for stimulating terror in humans." Venjie's PDA announced. It refused to not be obnoxious, no matter how much it was tinkered with.

"Yes. Thank you." Venjie muttered. "I hadn't noticed."

Another ten meters and a squid-like creature floated in her vision. A predator, judging by its simple thoughts.

"No!" Venjie cried out. "Get us out of here!"

Startled, Rekha jerked the steering wheel. The cyclops creaked its protest. "What? Why?"

"Those things emit EMPs," was growled. "They can shut the engine down!"

"They what?" hissed out of Rekha even as she pulled the wheel back for immediate ascent. The gauge spun numbers satisfying quickly. Her ears popped.

"Electro-magnetic-pulse." Alandris smoothed her hair as the cyclops leveled out. "From a damn fish. Fantastic. Obviously, this pit is going to the bottom of the list of places to explore. Take us to Venjie's tunnel."

Without burning up the engine, they didn't get there until after lunch. The tunnel mouth had to be five times the length of the cyclops. Bonesharks made quick movements away from the large vehicle. Their instincts thought it was a larger predator, like the reapers that fed on them. Good, because she didn't want to test the defensive shield. Schematics said it sucked up energy like a parasite.

With no easy way to recharge the power cells, they had to be careful how quickly they used up what they had. The dozen spares in the lockers felt like a lot. They also didn't feel like nearly enough for this adventure. Plans had been made for that problem, but taking the time to build a nuclear reactor and a habitat for it simply to charge power cells wasn't what they wanted to do.

Rekha slowed the sub. She scanned ahead for leviathans. Nothing near. There was something down deep. Multiple somethings. Too much rock in the way to get a good read though. Three hours of creeping down the tunnel had revealed some mineral deposits, black smokers that emitted volcanic gasses and excessive heat, and the occasional boneshark.

"Five hundred meters." Alandris spoke with awe and frustration. "Five hundred, and this tunnel doesn't seem like it ends. I don't know about you two, but I'm stressed and need a break. Rekha, put us closer to the wall and shut the engine down."

"Aye, captain," came out reflexively.

Alandris made a noise, yet didn't comment.

"Engine powering down." The ship announced.

Definitely have to do something about that voice! She peeled cramped hands off the wheel. Alandris had them visit the head, then do exercises for an hour to burn off stress and anxiety. Mostly, they did laps through the ship. Climb down the ladder from the control room, run between lockers, duck under the docked prawn's legs, climb up the ladder by the engine's turbine, dodge the plants that took up most of the free space on deck, pass between the beds, through the hatch into the control room and repeat. Some jumping jacks and lunges were included for fun. Rekha's swollen feet throbbed in agony. Was Alandris still punishing her?

They washed, hung their clothes to dry, and changed into the loose dresses that Venjie had cut and welded from extra blankets. What a luxury to have something aside from tattered clothes and diving suits to wear. Her dress wasn't silk or even soft cotton, yet it still made her feel like a queen. Almost made up for not having a kitchen anymore.

Dinner conversation was mostly how much deeper the tunnel could possibly go. After, they put themselves as far from each other as they could get. Alandris down below. Venjie the engine compartment. Rekha the control room.

She quickly didn't want to be looking out the viewport into the darkness and moved to the garden. What was left of usable space on deck was full of plants. Mature plants had been painstakingly stuffed into pots and transported to the cyclops. The leaves of the lantern trees scraped along the low ceiling, despite branches hanging low with fruit. Melons and potatoes filled the spaces between. One bulbo tree. Two ferns. The density of plant life made her smile, almost forget how deep below the surface she was.

Rekha yawned. Might as well sleep. She unrolled rubber and mesh between pots and wrapped up in blankets. Her eyes closed, and she plunged into dreams.

"Why am I not surprised?" a low voice whispered.

"You aren't?" a second questioned.

"You really didn't take her lechery seriously, did you?"

"But she…"

Who? What was happening?

_You're closer._ A warm, tired presence touched her mind. _Good._ It faded.

_Who?_ But it was already gone.

"She is painfully aware of boundaries."

Someone sighed. "I know."

Fluttering awareness put labels on the voices. Venjie and Alandris. They must be heading to bed. Sleep was good. She started to sink back into it.

"Rekha?"

Mm. No.

"Rekha, you don't have to sleep on the floor." Venjie's voice. "I'm sorry I got upset earlier. It was unfair of me. Rekha, please open your eyes. I need you to hear me."

Unhappily, she struggled through the soup of sleep to open an eye.

Venjie was kneeling and her expression was soft. "Hey. The bed is perfectly big enough to share. I apologize for earlier. I know you respect boundaries. Unless you feel more comfortable here, please come to bed."

Go to bed with Venjie? Oh no. No. No. No. She wanted that too much. "I'm fine." She ignored how aware she suddenly was that her thin mat wasn't enough to be comfortable or to adequately keep her insulated. Stubbornly, she closed her eyes.

"I remember how uncomfortable our mats were on the island, Rekha." Alandris stated. "That one is even thinner. It can't possibly be keeping you warm either. A chilled body is going to be more susceptible to sickness. We can't afford that down here, and you know it."

Anger flushed through her, banishing the shiver that had been developing.

"Alandris. That isn't necessary." Venjie objected.

"Are you warm enough, Rekha?"

"I said I'm fine." She managed to growl.

"We can't afford the energy cost of keeping the sub warmer." The doctor refused to back down. "I can feel the cold of the deck through my shoes. We'll put your mat to good use by folding it up and giving your feet relief at the pilot station. Stop being prideful and get up."

Hot and indignant, Rekha jumped to her feet and got in Alandris' face. "For an old Martian war vet, you seem to lack a basic sense of self-preservation," was spit out in her best scary voice. "Or you wouldn't make it such a hobby to push my buttons!" Plants rustled in a conjured theatrical wind.

Venjie took a gasping backwards step.

Unimpressed, Alandris leaned forward. Their noses almost touched. "Maybe you shouldn't have made such an effort at proving how gentle and non-threatening you actually are."

She sputtered.

"Pick up your blankets and get to bed, little girl." Alandris pointed over her shoulder.

The urge to stomp her foot and scream swept through her. It made her want to laugh. Fine. She'd obey _and_ have her tantrum. She focused every spark of psi strength she had to pick Alandris up.

"Rekha!" shrieked out. "Put me down!"

She did. Half a meter to the side. A lantern tree was grabbed by panicked hands. Grinning, she let psi sweep up her blankets, fly them across the deck, spread, and arrange them on the beds. One for each.

"Gods take your light, you insufferable child." Alandris barked behind her.

"Good dreams, old woman." Rekha cut a dramatic bow and strode to the larger bed. Psi lifted the covers, allowed her to slip toward the edge facing the wall. She laid on her side and closed her eyes.

Irritated muttering followed her.

"She did that to me too." Venjie whispered.

"What?"

"When we were coming back from the weapon platform and I tried to stop her from swimming. She moved the entire moth!"

Their movements paused. "She is obscenely stubborn and childish."

"Yes." Venjie groaned.

Alandris hummed. "She's also enormously thoughtful. You'll notice she left the open side to you so you won't feel trapped."

"She did?"

"Dream well, Venjie." Alandris' footsteps drew close, then fabric rustled, and a groan escaped.

Louder footsteps followed, and Venjie eased into bed. Body heat wafted off her. Rekha struggled not to roll over, to glomp onto that warmth and bury her cold nose in it. She twitched at a quick touch to her shoulder. "Thank you, Rekha."

She shrugged. "Good dreams."

* * *

A/N - fluff :)


	12. Push Forward

Chapter 12  
Push Forward

Rekha woke, deliciously warm, happily ready to lie there the whole day enjoying the heat source pressed along her back. She stretched lazily. Her heat source moved.

What?

Psi inspected the other side of her bed, discovered a body. Who had she shared her bed with? Quan again? She was always up for a roll.

Not Quan. Too tall. Wider shoulders.

Brain chugging away, Rekha opened her eyes. The dim lighting gave her a blank wall. Too close. Psi reached further into the room. Another bed with a body. Only one. Her two other roommates were absent, as was the rest of their quarters. Water was beyond the wall at Rekha's nose.

Oh.

Quan was gone. The _Aurora_ was a smoldering heap. Rekha was hundreds of meters below the surface of the worst planet in the galaxy, and the person she was sharing her bed with made her heart ache. The wall was too close. Venjie was too close. She couldn't breathe, had to get out. She went to throw off the covers and leap out and guilt stopped her. Venjie deserved her rest, didn't need to be woken up by a panicking bulkhead.

She could find a way to get up without waking Venjie. Right? The bed's edge was flush with the wall. No room there. Or… Her hand touched the awkward protrusion of the platform beneath the mattress. She'd always hated it before, but it could be useful here. Blankets were pushed off and tucked around Venjie. The foamlike mattress didn't express much movement and rising to her feet didn't rouse her bedmate. She stepped over Venjie, found the protruding platform with her toes and escaped the bed.

A yelp escaped as abused, bare feet touched frigid deck. She hustled her shoes and ship uniform from the locker. Light! She missed slippers. Her shoes had been old aboard the _Aurora_. Down here, the need to replace them was more prominent than ever. The soles were awfully thin. Something else on the ever-growing list of things she needed to figure out how to create. Once she had time.

She visited the hygiene closet and washed her face. No chores to do. No sunrise to watch. No fish to scare away. She checked the cyclops' readouts. Nothing interesting. Loud exercise was out of the question until the others rose. Quiet stretching then. Between the lantern trees, she began an old stretching routine that her parents had taught her.

It was ancient, to be honest. And it was about strength as much as stretching. She warmed quickly and moved into a handstand, a single hand. The sounds of people rising reached her. Smoothly, she switched hands.

"Delhian exercises?" Alandris asked.

"These movements are older than the trans-gov." Rekha folded her legs back to touch her head. Almost touch. An old injury kept her too stiff to complete the movement. "Predates space travel altogether by millenia."

"What does?" Venjie entered. "W-whoa," she stuttered.

Legs returned straight up, then split in opposite directions. "It's called yoga."

"Is this how you got up without waking me?" Venjie asked softly.

"No. I can fly as well."

"Wha-" coughed out. "Rekha!"

Giggles escaped her. "I wish I could self-propel." Exchange leg direction. "Can you imagine how much fun that would be?"

"You're in a fine mood today." Alandris poked a foot at her.

Rekha straightened her legs, folded forward, and rolled to her toes. "We're getting close to the disease facility."

Hesitant hope clouded Alandris' tone. "Rekha. The fact that we're deeper doesn't n-"

"She told me."

Expression twisting, "Who?"

Rekha bent backward until her hands were flat on the rubber mat and her body was arched. "The voice. She's powerful. I can't sense her until she makes contact."

"Voice?" worry pitched Alandris' voice low.

"I'm not going mad." Rekha said. "I've heard her voice several times. The first time, I did think I was imagining it. But she's contacted me a few times, just quick statements or questions, but she's definitely real. She's definitely not human."

Her new position let her watch her crewmates' faces. There was disbelief, fear, and confusion. "Why didn't you say anything before?"

"Even if you had believed me, there wasn't anything you could do with the information." Rekha would have shrugged if she could. "Whoever she is, she sounds old, tired, and eager to help. I wonder if she's a native or from the species that built the weapon platform."

Venjie sat down. "I don't know how I'd feel about meeting a precursor."

Alandris crossed her arms. "It's probably for the best that the only weapons we have are knives and laser cutters. I'm calm now, but facing a creator of the weapon that killed almost everyone I know and care about…"

Venjie nodded.

"You said the voice is powerful, but old? Could she overpower you?" The old soldier asked.

"If she has battle capability, yes. Absolutely. She could contact me on the surface from however deep she is, but I couldn't even sense her, still can't sense her."

"Why do you sound so relieved about this?" Venjie gaped.

Sound relieved? Did she? Rekha slipped into a sitting position. "Because if she truly wants to help and isn't trying to pull us into a trap, then I won't be the only psionic on this planet. It's been so long since…" She frowned, unwilling to go down that vulnerable path. "It would be a nice change." She put her feet back under her. "I'll go start breakfast."

Silence filled in the space she left. It followed her all two meters to the other side of the deck where they had a fabricator, counter, hot plate, and a locker of ingredients. She tried to dispel it with clattering and chopping. The noise of Alandris and Venjie beginning their own morning exercises almost did.

The sound of Rekha's mom chattering about herbs or her father singing as he stirred vegetables would have finished pushing out the silence. So would a cousin's telepathic teasing. Or the wind playing with leaves. Or music from a crewmate's homemade speakers that violated half a dozen ship rules that the XO turned a blind eye to. Or air rushing past her face as she explored a new city on her homemade hoverbike.

Sharp pain yanked her from reverie. Her knife had slipped, bitten deep into her finger. Rekha swore angrily and spent the next ten minutes roughly sterilizing and sealing the injury. Alandris raised a brow at it when Rekha served the meal, but otherwise it was another quiet repast.

They were at their stations by 0900. Rekha pushed aside her daydreams to focus on the task at hand. Her world boiled down to her forward view and the camera feeds. An hour in, and she brought the cyclops to a screeching halt.

"What happened?" Alandris demanded.

"Come look." Rekha stepped back to wave at the newest horror story on the camera feeds. Alandris stalked up to gasp and slap a hand to the wall for support. Venjie reacted similarly.

On the camera feed were giant bones that could only be a reaper. Its skeleton was scattered. The bones were damaged by what looked like teeth, teeth the size of the reaper's head. A few meters away was another skeleton, nearly complete, also with gigantic teeth marks. Whatever had killed the reapers was bigger than the cyclops. Significantly bigger.

"What in the galaxy is big enough to eat a reaper?" hissed Venjie.

Rekha reached into the deep, trembling at the gargantuan life she felt down there.

"Rekha?" Venjie prodded.

She swallowed against her fear-dry throat. "Whatever eats them lives in the deep."

"And that's where we're heading." Alandris wiped her face. "The two of y-"

"Might contract the Kharaa too." Rekha cut in. "We have to keep going."

Alandris stared for a long minute before shaking her head and waving forward. She sniffled, sighed. "Okay, pilot, take us further in."

"Aye, captain." Light, she didn't want to, but there wasn't another way.

It was the lighting's gradual change that Rekha noticed first. The plantlife was changing, its bioluminescence more blues and reds than the previous greens and yellows. A white shark darting away from the cyclops' lamps was the next. The next white shark, she realized that it wasn't white. It was transparent, the bones glowing a ghastly white in the unnerving blue underworld.

"Are its insides glowing too?" Venji whispered.

"I think it has luminescence in its skin. Its internal organs are being lit up by that." Alandris whispered back.

"How does…" Venjie trailed off at the deep blackness swallowing the world.

Flecks of light darted through it, but it was huge. Sensors couldn't find the edges. "It's a cavern." Rekha found her voice. As though her voice summoned it, a spine-rattling shriek came out of the darkness.

"Rekha?"

She didn't want to reach out, didn't want to find whatever was attached to that banshee's song.

"Rekha, what is it?"

Her hands acted of their own accord, letting the cyclops slow to a stop, putting the engines on silent-running mode, and cutting the lamps. She stared into the darkness.

"Rekha!" echoed through the cyclops.

She jumped, whirled, found Alandris and Venjie staring at her. The red lighting of the silent-running mode cast deep shadows across their faces, fear etched in every line. It grounded her. She reached out, found the monster, was surprised that it seemed about the size of a reaper. Whatever monstrosity she'd sensed earlier wasn't in this cavern. She sighed in relief and reported what she'd discovered.

"It could still cause us a lot of trouble. Keep us away from it." Alandris said grimly. "Try to follow a wall."

"Aye." Rekha agreed. She turned back and found that without the lamps, the water was a lurid green, plants and fungi glowed in clusters near black smokers, along the walls, over an uneven, murky, seafloor. Dots of light glowed in the distance. Flickers of white, green, and blue darted among black smokers and fungal growths.

She flicked on the lamps, and the nightmarescape vanished. Lamps off, it came alive. She couldn't decide which was worse. Flailing through the darkness made her want to cry and keeping the lights off to see didn't make sense to her brain.

Teeth grit, lamps off, she directed the cyclops along the wall on her right. The shrieks grew louder. Every moment drew them closer. She kept searching for a way to avoid the leviathan. The cavern was massive, a thousand nooks and crannies teasing of exits that remained elusive, if they existed at all. She kept going until strange stalagmites caught her eye. They were sharp and curved, thrusting up from what looked like a lake of green-yellow fog.

"Are those bones?" Alandris' chair creaked with her rising. She came up beside Rekha. "Can you get us closer?"

Bones? The stalagmites? She drew away from the wall a few meters, didn't have to get closer to see what Alandris was seeing. They weren't stalagmites, they were ribs. Humongous ribs, bound by vertebrae the size of prawnsuits, leading up to a towering skull that rivaled their cyclops. Light, she never wanted to see one of these things alive.

"I need scans." Alandris announced eagerly. "How b-" Coughing racked her body, hard, awful coughing that bent her double, had Rekha jumping to offer support. When the coughs finished, Alandris was left trembling and barely able to stand. Rekha led her back to her chair where she collapsed.

"I'll get you scans." Rekha promised. These bones weren't intrinsic to their mission, but they were from a creature they'd never seen before. Maybe they could give Alandris some answers. Maybe they would only satisfy a scientist's curiosity. Either would make Alandris happier and that was good enough reason for Rekha to investigate.

Temps were within tolerance range. The seaglide was almost at crush depth. She didn't want the noise it would produce, so she simply checked its readouts in case she needed a speed boost. Battery was good. Motor didn't need maintenance.

"I'll watch your back." Venjie was hefting the stasis rifle, checking its charge. Its blast could hold a reaper immobile for five minutes. Would have been nice to have when Venjie got cornered by the infected one. Stupid thing had been under a pile of materials in a workshop at the time. It was a relief to see now.

"No glides or noise unless necessary." Rekha said. "We'll scan a few ribs and the skull, then come back."

Venjie nodded.

They squeezed into suits, tugged on flippers and gear, and slapped to the hatch. Rekha gave a thumbs up and dove into the water. Breathing was a struggle, the pressure was that intense. It felt somewhere between feeling like she could walk on a hard surface and being crushed under a mountain. Fish immediately came to investigate. A shark followed. She batted it away and when it circled around, she broke one of the boney spines along its back. It howled and dashed into the gloom. There was another shark behind her when she turned, but this one was caught in a stasis field.

Rekha nodded her thanks to Venjie and closed the distance to a rib. While the scanner took its time, she noticed a cluster of black smokers in the middle of the ribs. They no longer spewed superheated gas and sediments into the water, had been cold a long time judging by the smoothed edges and buildup of flora. While active, they'd produced a sizable hill. The bottom sections of several ribs were buried in it.

These bones were old. Extremely old. Maybe they weren't indicative of something they'd find later. Maybe they were the bones of an extinct species! That would be nice. Her mind brought up the bones of dead reapers. This species might be extinct, yet there was still something alive big enough to eat reapers. There was nothing to celebrate here.

The scanner blipped its completion, and they swam the dozen meters to the skull. A few teeth were still attached. They were longer than Rekha was tall. Two empty eye sockets boasted the same; two others were slightly smaller. Small, translucent, glowing fish darted out when they shone a light in. A shark came to investigate, wasn't immediately deterred by mental prodding. Psi found its gills and jabbed them until the shark finally swam away.

Turning around, Rekha couldn't find Venjie. Panic rose until she sensed Venjie inside the skull. The woman hadn't even noticed the shark; she was too busy examining the skull's interior with light and scanner. A smile tickled at her cheeks. Venjie trusted her enough to watch her back.

The thought warmed her, distracted her, flew out of her head when a teeth-rattling shriek filled the water. Rekha screamed and flailed, cracked her head against the skull. Dazed, she floated and stared into the murky waters. Lights danced and bobbed all around her. It was kind of pretty, in a horrible, wrong way.

One of the lights seemed to be getting bigger. It was filling the darkness, filling Rekha's vision. Another ghastly shriek made her head vibrate, cleared the cotton from it, let her see clearly. The leviathan. She grabbed at the ancient skull and swung her body into its cavernous mouth. The leviathan shrieked by, howling at the loss of its interesting new prey. In the darkness, her heart hammered, her breaths came too fast, and she almost screamed again when a soft blue light drew close.

Venjie's terrified face peered at her from the lit mask. Shaking hands clutched the stasis rifle. Would it work? That thing was definitely a few meters longer than a reaper, thicker body and head too. Instead of vestigial arms or giant, grasping mandibles, it had an elongated skull, two beams sticking out on either side of its face. Its mouth was a giant cavern that could swallow sharks whole.

Rekha thought that she'd witnessed the most terrifying things this planet had to offer. How was it possible that there were worse things than reapers? The ghostly leviathan shrieked into the nightmare waters. Its glowing, wraithlike form was straight out of a horror vid from Rekha's teen years.

Teen years. Something about that teased her thoughts. More shrieks announced that the leviathan was circling back around, investigating the skull. It radiated frustration. When a third pass didn't produce its prey, its tail whipped angrily, smashing ancients ribs, scaring schools of little fish. How infantile. Reapers didn't behave like…

Oh light. Was this leviathan a _baby_?

She peeked out from between barnacle-covered teeth. The leviathan shrieked and attacked a shark, tore it to pieces, smacked the chunks about. Light! It was juvenile! This thing wasn't fully grown! Terror and panic started to take over. A glance at Venjie's equally frightened face reminded her that she didn't have time to be scared.

Okay, the leviathan was a juvenile. Could she use that? Its soft spot should be easier to find and exploit. She balked at the thought of killing, especially of killing a baby, no matter how awful it was. Could she scare it? What in the light would a giant leviathan be scared of? The skull she was in laughed at her. A bigger leviathan. No way to replicate that.

Could she distract it? The chunks of shark were being set upon by small fish. The leviathan was back at the skull, its tail whacked against it, caused another tooth to fall. It suddenly accelerated, turned around, and raced back. The skull cracked under the assault.

Oh no. Rekha tried what she'd done with the shark. She used psi to find its gills and jab at them. The leviathan shrieked and bit at the water. It flicked its giant body about, rubbed its gills against any nearby surface.

Venjie touched her arm, made a questioning gesture. Touch her mind and explain? No. She pantomimed diving down to the seafloor, hiding in the yellow fog, swimming to the cyclops.

Venjie's response was immediate and negative. She grabbed Rekha's arm, violently shaking her head. When Rekha didn't swim down, Venjie let go to produce her PDA, brought up a scan. The yellow fog was corrosively alkaline and denser than the water, which was why it behaved like a fog at the bottom.

The leviathan was coming back. Damn it! Rekha attacked the gills, the eyeballs, only let up with the leviathan swam away. The second it started to return, the attacks renewed. A half hour of that, and the leviathan either forgot about the interesting things in the skull or connected them to pain. It shrieked away to a deep alcove that Rekha hoped they didn't need to explore later.

Rekha and Venjie slipped out from inside the skull. A shark was there. It opened its jaws. Venjie reacted first, the rifle going off, a bubble of static surrounding the shark, immobilizing it. Fear rebounded in its mind. Venjie took lead, heading toward the cyclops, one hiding spot at a time. She kept glancing back to Rekha, probably wondering about the leviathan or maybe about the nightmare psionic who could scare away giant monsters. That thought added to the burgeoning headache. She pushed it away. No time for self-pity.

Back at the cyclops, Alandris was briefed and given the scans. Eager curiosity burned at the PDA. Alandris shook her head. "As much as we all want to take a break right now. We should move while the leviathan is cowed."

Rekha left her suit on and went to the pilot station. "On your orders, captain."

"Keep on, Rekha. Normal speed."  
"Aye." She stirred the engine to normal speed and moved forward. Hours were spent exploring the vast cavern, poking into deep recesses, and tensely waiting for the return of the leviathan.

"Lunch break." Alandris announced around 1300. Rekha powered down the engine after settling them in an alcove. "Venjie, go use the head, then take first watch."

"Aye." Venjie nearly jumped down the hatch to the lower level.

"I'll wait for her return." Alandris gestured. "Go on."

Rekha needed to use the hygiene facility too, but went to get a drink instead of waiting outside the door where she would run into Venjie. When she heard Venjie return, she took her turn unloading and washing up. Lunch was tackled after. While potatoes cooked, she tested one of the ghostly fish that Venjie had acquired earlier. They weren't awful.

Low in calories though. She pawed through the lockers, looking for some interesting way of serving yet another sub-par fish. There was a half-eaten lemon ration bar stowed beside the rendered shark fat. How old was it? It wasn't molded, but crumbled at her touch. She licked the crumbs off her fingers. A little sugar and fat, and they could be an almost decent dessert topping. Or with spice and fat, a nice, crispy coating to…

Fried fish. Yes! A sprinkle of dehydrated kelp and salt, and the crumbs completely changed. There was enough to lightly coat each slab of fish. They gave off a delightful scent as they fried in the liquefied fat. Her stomach growled appreciatively.

"How are you making something that smells that good?" Alandris rasped as she sat at their little table.

"A stroke of genius." Rekha grinned as she blended lantern fruit and white sap into a frothy, sweet drink.

"Though I appreciate the effort, it's a bit much for lunch, isn't it?" Alandris asked as a plate of fried fish and sliced potatoes were put in front of her. She sucked down a mouthful of drink with a sigh.

"Nonsense. It's already been an awful day. We could all use the pickmeup." Rekha replied. "I'll take Venjie hers while it's hot."

Venjie gaped at the delivery. She hissed at the heat, yet shoved a bite of crispy fish into her mouth, and moaned around it. "Incredible."

Flush with pleasure, Rekha left Venjie to her meal, and went to her own. She held the delicious treat and compliments tight as the day dragged on. A few needed resources were found. Upgrades to the Cyclops depth limits were now possible. They held off fabricating them, hoping that they'd find the facility at this depth, could save the energy and resources for other projects.

Several strange plants were investigated. A bulbous sac that was hard to find in shallow waters sprouted in vast quantities down here. Studying the thing as it pulsed on the wall, Rekha thought to consider if it was edible as well as being useful in advanced construction materials. Scan results said it was.

No one wanted to tempt spoiling their stomachs after Rekha's beautiful lunch. Taste testing was put off for the next day.

They found the leviathan's hiding spot. It was right next to a large tunnel a couple dozen meters off the seafloor. Rootlike structures that glowed a soft yellow lined what they could see of the tunnel. A veritable waterfall of toxic fog fell from it. Fish played unconcerned through it, up it, down it.

"Do we keep going?" Rekha whispered after her report. The red light of silent-running made Alandris look sicker than ever.

"The research facility might be down that tunnel." Venjie said.

"Maybe. But scans show it sloping upward. The facility is supposed to be near this depth." Rekha countered.

"How far are we from our entrance?" Alandris asked.

Rekha consulted the map that the computer was compiling. "We've nearly circled the entire cavern. There's another possible tunnel if we continue on this heading."

Fingers tapped on a console. "We can always come back. Let's check out the rest of this cavern."

It wasn't a tunnel so much as a giant crack that split the cavern from floor to ceiling. Near the center of the wall, the crack was wide enough for three reapers to swim side by side. Rekha sensed another wide area with impossibly large fauna.

"Another leviathan?" Venjie moaned.

"Let's take it as a given that everything down here is worse than above." Alandris rasped. "Our new normal is nothing to panic over."

Their new normal. She hated their new normal. But Alandris was right. Nothing to do for it except to push forward.

* * *

A/N - may the beginning of the holiday season not destroy you :) may it be filled with good food and good company


	13. Short Durations

Chapter 13  
Short Durations

As one, the crew stared out the front window, breaths held. The enormous, ghostly leviathan twitched, but otherwise remained immobile on its perch atop a wrecked alien facility. It was bigger than the last one. Much, much bigger. It was also, apparently, asleep.

"You're certain?" Alandris hissed.

Rekha cleared her throat, took a sip of water. Stupid dry cyclops air. Her nose and throat ached for normal humidity. "As much as I can be."

They looked at each other, back out the viewport.

"Deploying the prawn will be too loud." Venjie said.

Loud enough to wake one of this planet's ultra aggressive predators? Of course it would be. "Yes."

"Can the dive suits withstand the pressure at this depth?" Venjie asked.

It'd been a while since Rekha had looked at the schematics. She didn't want to take her attention too far from the cyclops' controls; she looked to Alandris.

A PDA appeared. "It says they're good for depths up to one point five kilometers."

Had she believed that before? Maybe. She hadn't spent any time deeper than a couple meters while playing on holidays. But now? Not a chance. There was no way the flexible suits could protect the human body from the crushing pressures past a kilometer. Who had lied to sell this to Alterra? Who hadn't thought to test it before buying it? Rekha certainly didn't want to be the first.

"And the temperature?" Venjie added. "It's only three Celsius out there."

"For short duration."

"How short?"

Alandris snorted. "'The reinforced dive suit can protect the wearer from extremes in temperatures ranging from minus ten to plus fifty Celsius for short durations.'"

"How specific," drawled Venjie.

Why did Alterra make everything more difficult? A short duration could be two hours or fifteen minutes! Guess she was going to find out.

"Before you volunteer to," Venjie jabbed at Rekha. "You aren't going alone."

The stubborn set to Venjie's jaw killed Rekha's weak argument. It wasn't like she'd been looking forward to exploring an ancient, decrepit alien facility by herself anyway. "We should get down there ASAP," was all she said.

"Agreed. No telling when the leviathan will wake up." Alandris nodded. A coughing fit sent her back to her chair.

Rigid, Rekha watched the leviathan, ready to charge the cyclops defense systems or start carving into its bestial mind. It didn't even twitch. Her heart kept hammering in her throat long after Alandris finished and sat there panting for breath.

"Let's check our gear and be ready in twenty," came Venjie's tense whisper.

Rekha nodded. _You'll stay up here and keep the defense system on standby? _She asked a wheezing Alandris.

_Yes. But I'll keep my hands off it. Wouldn't want to accidentally set it off when I hit another coughing fit._

_That wouldn't be ideal._

Alandris waved at her. _Go. Keep me updated._

_Aye._ Rekha double checked that the engine was powered down to minimal levels and controls were locked before she stepped away. She glugged water, refilled her supplies, and replaced Alandris' empty water bottle with a fresh one.

"I'm not bedridden yet, little girl." Alandris groused.

Rekha shrugged. Telling Alandris she was worried would only irritate the old soldier. She reviewed her gear and emergency supplies, nodded at the readiness of them, then took turns with Venjie scanning each others suits. Rekha's had a small tear that needed repair, Venjie's a splitting seam. They shrugged on tanks, flippers, and masks. Another round of scanning, then gauges and seals were inspected. Thumbs up were given.

They dove into the water. Swimming was like pushing her way through a dense crowd. And it was cold. Almost painfully cold. Fighting off shivers, Rekha started for the alien facility. Three sharks immediately came to investigate. Three of them. Rekha pushed them away only to stare in shock as they attacked each other, snapping and biting, spilling blood until one went belly up. Rekha tried to use the distraction for her and Venjie to head toward the facility, but the remaining sharks immediately gave chase.

A stasis bubble caught them. In its slight glow, she saw the telltale green pustules. Oh. That's why they were being ultra aggressive. Should she take the time to find their soft spots? She glanced toward the facility, the enormous leviathan twitching above it. Cold leached shivers from her. No time. She left the sharks and moved on.

Good thing she did. By the time they reached the edge of the facility, she saw a mini phasegate open. A warper spilled out, made a beeline for the trapped sharks, and tore them apart. It ignored the stasis bubble? How?! The warper started to circle the area. Oh no.

Venjie tugged on her arm, pointed to a shadowed square on the facility wall. It was an entryway. No stasis field. The interior was flooded and pitch black. Rekha had never been as glad of company as right then. She wanted to press close to Venjie, to take her hand for reassurance. She did swim close enough for Venjie to look at her sideways, then pause and gesture whether Rekha was okay or not.

While she was considering selfish ideas, she almost opened a psi channel to do away with the gestures and hear Venjie's comforting voice. Almost. Venjie hadn't given permission, so it was out of the question. Venjie studied her for a long minute, sympathy written across her expression. Damn that conversation about Rekha's struggle with small, dark places. Angrily, Rekha pushed forward, putting distance between herself and Venjie.

Fallen debris and cables snagged at her. Panic nearly made her choke, but she managed to control her fear, to take a few deep breaths and find a way through the tangled mess. She ducked under collapsed walls and twisted beams. She swore at every deity she'd ever heard of. When she was through the main snarl, she checked in with Alandris. Situation was the same on her end. Good.

A glimmer of light caught her eye. There was an intact doorway with a forcefield. Its terminal wanted one of those weird tablets that she thankfully had a spare of. The forcefield retreated, giving her access to a small room with a terminal. The aliens' version of a private office? She downloaded what data it would give her and followed Venjie down a similarly intact hallway that led to a series of rooms. A laboratory of some kind.

Nearly pristine in the lack of debris, Rekha gaped at illuminated displays, terminals, and a myriad of instruments she didn't immediately recognize. A warper hanging from the ceiling commanded her attention. Half a warper. It was disturbing until she realized it wasn't decomposed. Then it was beyond disturbing. The thing was a machine! No wonder she had trouble sensing it. The things weren't alive. Were they running on ancient programming? How many were there? Could she replicate the teleporting tech from scans of it? Or how such a small vessel could power it? Almost rabidly, she scanned the hanging nightmare and had to pinch herself to keep from stopping and examining the results.

She found another terminal to access. Unreadable alien glyphs scrolled by. It would take a few hours for the PDA to translate everything. She queried using the _Aurora's _core. Transmitting the data through the relays they'd been dropping would take nearly as long. Wait for the slow PDA it was.

Her attention settled on Venjie, who was scanning the contents of cases and displays. She paused in front of a massive window. Rekha drew closer to see through the window and into a containment room that could have housed a reaper or two. It held a fossilized old skeleton of yet another leviathan class predator. She shook her head and moved on, gave Alandris a brief update.

There were dozens of preserved creatures, eggs, and flora. Once, there had probably been hundreds, but as many cases and displays that remained intact, they were only a handful of what could have been. Though the main structure of the lab was intact, there was broken glass everywhere. Tools and carts were in corners. What could do this to a place that Alterran tech couldn't scratch? An enemy attack? Seismic occurrence? Rekha shuddered at the thought of another earthquake burying her alive in this place.

Venjie came close, touched her arm. She gestured if Rekha was ready to leave. Again, she thought about opening a psi-channel, dismissed it. Then she pondered why these dive masks didn't have comms, didn't even have space allotted for them. It didn't make sense. Adding earbuds and mic would be easy! If she had the time and custom parts. Was it because it was only cheap survival gear? Probably. Greedy, shortsighted Alterrans.

Had they examined everything? Gotten all the data they could? She checked her chrono. It'd been almost an hour. Too long. Her body ached from the cold. _I think we've found all we're going to down here_. She reported to Alandris.

_I read. ETA?_

_Fifteen to get out._

_Before you come in, there's a few scans I'd like_. Alandris said.

_What?_

_Those giant cables we saw holding the facility up. We should find out how they were disconnected. And there's a skeleton on the seafloor. Another colossal leviathan. I'd like to know if there's some correlation between the damage to the facility and this monster._

Rekha cringed, disconnected, and felt for the ghost leviathan. Its conscious mind remained a sleepy fog. She gestured her intentions to Venjie, and they made their careful exit. Painfully aware that the leviathan could wake any moment, Rekha took multiple scans of the damaged cables, then swam down to the seafloor where yet another terrifying skeleton awaited her. It was half-buried under debris and rockfall, and still obviously larger than the leviathan above her, yet slightly smaller than the remains in the cavern.

She didn't want to stay long enough to consider the differences. She simply took a few scans and would have bolted except that Venjie was swimming into deep shadows for her own scans. Psi kept a careful lookout for unseen danger, ready to punch a shark or yank Venjie out of trouble. Nothing happened. By the time they made it to the cyclops, Rekha was drenched in anxious sweat. She was going to stink like rancid socks when she finally got her suit off.

"Let's get out of here while we still can." Rekha nearly whined. No one argued. She barely stowed her gear before jumping to the pilot station and setting the engine to silent-running. Achingly slow, she turned the sub about and went through the crack they'd come in. The sleeping giant didn't wake. The juvenile leviathan remained in its hidey hole. She heaved out a breath. At the crew's agreement, she put the sub on a course that would finish circumnavigating the cavern.

She stopped almost immediately at another tunnel. The foggy river sloped down it, lighting up a long, wide corridor that seemed to turn blue in the distance. Rekha squinted, reached out with psi. The corridor was mostly empty aside from a few rays, the refreshingly not predatory kind, but it seemed to keep going far beyond what Rekha could sense. She definitely didn't want to explore it.

"Take us in a bit." Alandris commanded. "We'll rest here until the translation program finishes."

Rekha grit her teeth and did as ordered.

"I've been looking at the scans." Alandris spoke. "The force it would take to damage that facility, to rip those anchors from the cave walls…"

"Seismic?" Rekha squeaked.

Alandris shook her head. "The skeleton below, there's massive trauma to the skull and hands. I th-"

"Hands?" Rekha demanded. These monsters had _hands now_!?

"That's what I was looking at." Venjie spoke quietly. "Under the debris, I saw what looked like claws."

Alandris nodded. "It had opposable thumbs." She frowned at her PDA. "The skeleton wasn't that old. This species could feasibly still be alive."

"I hate this planet," came from Venjie. "I need to unload." Without waiting for response or permission, she fled the bridge.

Rekha refrained from chasing after her. She was the last person Venjie would want comfort from. "I'll see about dinner."

"You could let Venjie take her turn on kitchen duties." Alandris grunted.

"I'm a better cook." And it would keep her mind off the fresh nightmare fuel of a day she'd had.

Another grunt. "Get out of here."

There was no way she was going to top lunch. Might as well find out what a gel sac tasted like. Scanner said it was edible raw or cooked. The purple spots were gooey and full of sucrose, and the rest was fibrous, highly nutritious. She cut a small sliver of the spongey flesh and nibbled.

"Is it any good?" softly spoken, the question barely made it through the dense foliage of the garden. Venjie was on the other side of the melon box.

Rekha considered the sac on the counter. "A bit like eggplant."

Venjie ducked under tree branches to get to the counter. Her nose wrinkled. "And what does eggplant taste like?"

Limited Alterran cuisine. Shame. There was more to food than nutrition bars! "It's a soft vegetable that likes warm weather." She cut another slice and held it out. "Try."

The sample was accepted, eyed, sniffed, and set into her mouth. "It's bitter." She swallowed with a grimace. "Honestly, a nice change from our other options, but why would people eat this on purpose?"

"Eggplant's flavor becomes much nicer when it's cooked, especially if it's prepped well." She cut a little deeper, considered the plainer flavor of the interior. "Maybe this will too." A purple spot was pierced. Its contents oozed, leaving a viscous liquid on the knife. She swiped some off with a finger, tested it. Sweet, almost nutty. "This is nice."

"Too sweet." Venjie reported.

Rekha dug into the thing, found a stem-like structure that connected the spot to the interior. "Scan this, would you?"

A scanner was pulled from the food locker. "Still edible. High in magnesium. Alandris was saying we could use more of that in our diet."

It was plain, but crunchy. Delightfully, wonderfully crunchy. A nice balance between the bitter flesh and sweet goo. "Here." A stalk was presented to Venjie.

"Ultra nice!"

Luckily, the sac did cook up nicely. If only she had proper spices to make it truly delicious. Light, she'd rather have real eggplant if she was wishing for spices. And chicken. And rice pudding. And her secrets back.

She shook her head and focused on the present. Finish getting through this day and prepare for the next. Goo, salt, and water were blended into a thin dressing she drizzled over leaves and stems for a decent salad. Vinegar would be nice. She was pretty sure that making vinegar not only required alcohol but months of waiting.

"Two gourmet meals in one day?" Alandris asked. "What are you buttering us up for?"

"I was going to ask for a raise and another week of leave, ma'am."

"How about more work, no pay, and no vacation?"

"Venjie can cook for that."

"Hey!" Venjie protested.

Alandris and Rekha burst into giggles until a distant shriek quieted them.

"Where did you learn to cook, Rekha?" Venjie eventually asked. "Or did you figure it out yourself?"

"My parents." she felt a nostalgic smile tug at her cheeks. "It was important to them that we make at least one meal a day together."

Her crewmates stared.

"I helped in grandmother's restaurant for a while too." All the delicious things that came out of that kitchen! "She could take the strangest things she found cheap at the market and turn them into feasts! People would come from all over to try her wild new specials." She sighed longingly. "I miss her cooking."

"Your grandmother is a restaurant owner?" Venjie asked.

"That explains why Rekha's so handy in the kitchen." Alandris shrugged.

"A cook?" Venjie couldn't seem to grasp the story.

Rekha crunched through her salad. "She could probably figure out how to turn inedible plants edible too. She'd find a way to make flour out of seeds or…" Rekha paused. Wasn't that basically how flour was made? From ground nuts or seeds? She needed to rescan the seeds she'd come across, see if she could find a way to make that happen. Maybe a strand was like cashews or cacao, needed to be baked or bathed in alkaline before it was edible. To have even a simple, odd-tasting pan bread would be an incredible life improvement!

"I know psionic strength follows bloodlines." Venjie stabbed her fork at the air. "That means your family is full of strong psionics, and you're trying to tell me they're simple cooks?"

"Not all. Dad was an engineer and mom was a spy."

Venjie's mouth opened.

"Venjie," came Alandris' quiet rasp. "Stop."

"Delhi is a giant military complex! There's not room for _restaurants_!" Venjie spat.

Rekha dropped her fork. That was wrong. Part of the propaganda spread by Mars and other governments that Delhi had targeted. Everyone was expected to participate in the military, either with their lives or their money, yet there was culture and life outside of it. "Not everything they taught you in school was true."

Venjie glared at her.

Rekha bristled. "Delhi is more than the monsters it creates."

"But the milita-"

"Engineer Remus!" Alandris slammed her hand down on the table, making the dishes jump. "Consider your next words carefully. _Very_ carefully."

Venjie's wide-eyed gaze swung from one angry crewmate to another. Her throat bobbed with a heavy swallow. Her gaze dropped to her plate, and she poked at the half-eaten meal. "You're a great cook, Rekha." A forkful was lifted to her mouth.

That's it? Venjie wasn't going to keep pushing it?

Venjie busied her mouth with the rest of her dinner.

Ultra weird. Rekha picked up her own fork and continued. Cleanup was silently done by Venjie, and they separated until the translation results came up. Alandris read them aloud.

"There's a good deal of information here. Specimen research, experiment reports, viral incubation periods." Her eyes flickered across the lines of text. "One of the last reports talks about an egg they were investigating. It belonged to one of the leviathan species. That's what caused all the damage. The egg's parent tried to get it back. It died trying; that's the skeleton below the facility." Alandris hissed. "And that's how the Kharaa got into the ecosystem. It's not native to this planet. The aliens brought it here to study because local wildlife seemed to have a resistance to it."

Venjie swore under her breath about unchecked research always leading to disaster.

"I'll need at least an hour or two to go through the data." Alandris said, her nose already buried in the PDA.

Rekha had the terrible feeling that the cure wasn't in the data. It was even deeper, far below in the awful dark of this hellplanet. She took herself to the garden. Plants and pots were inspected, quickgrow controls adjusted, and water distributed. The tiny kitchen also got an inspection, then the docked exosuit. She resigned herself to killing time with exercise when Alandris called them back to the bridge.

She looked a decade older. "We have to find another facility."

"What?" Venjie barked.

"There's a specimen facility they built to house a creature that proved immune to the virus."

"But they didn't create a cure from it or it'd be in the databanks." Rekha said. Was it the voice? Had she been trapped in an alien facility for hundreds of years? How was she alive? Was her longevity why she was immune?

"There's a chance they did and the data is simply housed in that facility. Even if there isn't one," Alandris held up a hand to stall Venjie's next outburst. "Even if there isn't, there might be something a human brain can click together that the precursors couldn't. The facility is near the max crush depth of the upgrades we can fab. Let's get the upgrades fabbing now and we can start fresh in the mo-" Coughing took over, bent her double. From that angle, Rekha could see the beginnings of green pustules forming along her neck. Oh light.

"We'll start down this tunnel in the morning." Alandris rasped. "We should start keeping watch, in case leviathans come knocking in the night."

They nodded.

"Venjie will take first, Rekha third. I'll take middle."

"Aye."

"I'll start the fab." Venjie abruptly walked away.

Rekha sighed. "I suppose I'll get the supplies from storage." She made sure Alandris had water before heading down the ladder. The needed materials were heavy. Mostly the plasteel. It would have been easier if she was wearing her suit. The d-pocket would have let her haul everything in one trip. As it was, it took her three trips and Venjie two, to get everything to the cyclops' fabricator in the engine room.

She'd watched upgrade modules created many times, yet it always blew her mind how kilos and kilos of material could be modified and ultra condensed into a hand-sized module that only weighed five kilos. And as much as that blew her mind, watching the changes to the atomic structure of a vehicle or exosuit was beyond her ability to grasp. She dropped the last of the materials into the fabricator and wiped sweat off her brow.

"I can't believe this trip was a total bust." Venjie seethed as the machine hummed away.

Rekha leaned against the bulkhead and watched Venjie pace from engine room to garden and back, muttering about everything wrong with this planet, the virus, and the precursors. When she started muttering about if this disease -_this plague_\- was the product of unethical research, Rekha moved to leave.

"Wait, Rekha. I'm sorry. Please don't go." Venjie's hand was outstretched as though to touch her. Slowly, it curled back and down. "I don't want to be alone right now."

Understandable. She resumed her lounging position and watched Venjie as she started to fidget. Should Rekha say something? "One point four kilometers down." She could have slapped herself. Anything but that, bulkhead!

"What?"

"Sorry. It's the depth the other facility is supposed to be at."

"Gods. Did Alandris say that after I walked away?"

Rekha shook her head. "No. I read it while Alandris was coughing."

"Was there more she left out?"

"It said something about a volcanic region, but there wasn't much else."

"Volcanic region over a kilometer down. Ultra wonderful." Venjie's head tilted up. "Maybe we'll get a silver lining and there won't be any predators down there."

"Maybe."

Venjie sighed. "Don't sound so enthusiastic over there."

"If I don't get my hopes too high, I can't be disappointed." This was getting too intimate. She faked a yawn. "I think I'll head to bed."

Amber eyes narrowed at her. "It's early, even for you."

"It's been a long day."

"Every day here is a long day."

Rekha shrugged and straightened.

"Rekha."

The fabricator dinged its completion of the depth upgrade. Now it could be upgraded to the Mark II. Rekha helped pile more heavy resources into the fabricator. They didn't have the resources for the Mark III that would give them a nice safety margin with a crush depth of 1700m. There was a mineral it called for that they hadn't seen yet. Hopefully they'd find it somewhere along the way or they were stuck testing the dive suit's true depth limits.

"Thought you were going to bed?" Venjie challenged when Rekha didn't immediately leave.

"You're right. It's too early." Rekha checked the countdown on the fab. Half an hour until completion. "I wanted an excuse to get some distance from you."

The challenge in Venjie's eyes faded, was replaced by a soft vulnerability that had Rekha backing up into the engine wall. Venjie turned away. "I can finish this up on my own."

"I know, but you said you needed company." Why couldn't she take the offered exit?

"Not if it hurts you."

"Where was your concern earlier when you were shouting about psionics not allowed to be cooks?" Immediate regret had her biting her tongue. Why had she barked that? She didn't want an answer.

Stiff shoulders slowly turned. Venjie stared at her for what felt like an eternity. "I-I've hated and been terrified of psionics all my life. My parents, their parents, all my extended family, even my neighbors, they all felt the same about Delhians. Monsters. Delhians are monsters. They can't be anything else."

See? She didn't want an answer.

"But…" Venjie sighed, shook her head, looked away.

Her breath hissed out. She stole a look at the exit.

"But then you come along. Alandris talks about what a useful ally you are, that she trusts you, even likes you. Alandris! She fought in the Grass Moon War. She fought and killed psionics. She hates them as much as I do, probably more. But you are her exception." Venjie's fists were tight at her side. Her shoulders practically vibrated from contained energy.

Rekha would have bolted if there was anywhere to go.

"You put yourself in danger to save me even though I hated you. You work so painfully hard to get through everyday. You're a gods-touched cinnamon roll even when you're being a dirty lech!"

A cinnamon roll?

"I'm over here, trying to hold on to what my parents taught me, but you're over there, being a cinnamon roll, talking about normal family history, casually being a decent human being, and changing my life views!" Venjie huffed.

This situation was her fault? H-

Venjie caught her gaze. "I'm trying to see you as a regular person, Rekha, not the pinnacle monster I was told you're supposed to be. But it's hard. I'm sorry."

Had Venjie ever been as beautiful as she was right now? There was a shining nova of determination, hope, and warmth standing before Rekha. The intensity of it was too much. Rekha had to look away. "What's a cinnamon roll?" was all she could think to say. "I've eaten them before, but what did you mean by it?"

"All of that and you focus on the food." Venjie palmed her face. "Why am I stuck with you?"

Was that an insult? Did she mean something else?

"Cinnamon roll is old slang for someone who's too kind and sweet for all the dark stuff that happens to them."

Heat raced up her spine. Venjie was calling her sweet? And kind? "Oh."

Venjie sighed, glanced at the fab timer, and sat on the cold floor beside Rekha. She stared down at the most confusing woman in the galaxy until her legs ached, and she let them fold and deposit her butt to the floor. The timer read twenty-two minutes remaining.

"Rekha?"

"Hm?"

"If psionics were welcome anywhere in the galaxy, where would you go?"

Welcome? "As in I wouldn't have to hide? I could use psi to grab tools from a kit across the workshop without being afraid of getting mobbed or sent to prison or worse?"

"If you didn't have to hide and could choose any profession you wanted."

She stared at the fab timer. Nineteen minutes. "A desert. Any desert, as long as it's hundreds of kilometers from the closest ocean."

"I'd like to see the rings of Saturn. They're supposed to be spectacular from the surface of Titan."

They were. Rekha had gone there on a holiday with her parents once. Her head tilted, and her eyes settled on Venjie's face. There was a hunger, a longing, there, for what, Rekha couldn't guess. Probably to be anywhere except here, trapped on this planet with her. Glistening eyes shifted to catch hers.

"A Mongolian colony." Rekha said. "Maybe the Tuvan moon. I hear the restaurants there are some of the best in the galaxy." The ancient origins of Terran Mongols might have been nomadic yak herders, but the current trans-gov was also home to ethnicities that used to call themselves Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and a few others. All of that history fused together made _amazing_ food.

Venjie blinked. Tears tracked down her cheeks, and she started laughing. It was the greatest sound that Rekha had ever heard.

* * *

A/N - Happy new year!

Don't know about you, but I spend a ton of time thinking about my next meal/good food. Especially at work, when it gets slow af. Not complaining! I also get a ton of writing done then. So I'm all for long, quiet days  
but...  
yummy food  
nom


	14. Eggs

Delight swelled in her as she watched the little ones discover something new. A Light Dancer. The adult female was nearly double the size of the largest, yet that did not deter their curiosity. Lights flickered and buzzed from one dorsal ridge to another, then rapidly danced along head prongs, finished with three solid blinks from the ventral ridges. Light Dancer talk. The little ones didn't understand yet, but she did.

It was a welcome to her territory. She was pleased by their visit. Her own little ones had recently become adults and left to find their own territories. She knew that they wouldn't understand and patiently allowed them to play, keeping her zaps gentle when they became brave enough to investigate her lights.

Above and behind, the rest of the pod laughed. Visiting the Light Dancers was always interesting. She was glad she'd convinced the pod to bring the little ones here today. The vast waters held many wonders, yet few were as incredible as other intelligent beings.

She broadcasted her joy and bathed in the reflection of it from her pod. A very good day. She would hold it close for many cycles.

* * *

Rekha sat bolt upright and gasped. She stared into the darkness of the room, panting until the cool of the air made her aware of tears drying on her cheeks. Light, she'd been crying from joy and now she was crying from the loss of it. When was the last time she'd been happy?

Noise from beside her had her holding her breath. When Venjie shifted and laid quiet once more, Rekha exhaled. She rose and dressed, her thoughts whirling. She hadn't been dreaming. At least, it wasn't her dream. It was a telepathic sharing. A sharing from the powerful presence that kept popping up and vanishing.

It answered one question. She was native to the planet. And there were other sentient species here as well! The Light Dancer? The electric fish that liked the cold waters. Ampeels, the PDA had named them. Ultra mind boggling. Their electricity was more than a hunting slash defense mechanism. Alandris would chomp at the bit to collect data on that. How many other intelligent creatures were out there? Was there more to the reapers? The ghost leviathans?

Rekha shook her head. Too much to do other than wonder about things aside from finding a safe way down to the next alien facility. She padded from the room and went about her new morning routine. Unload, hack up a bunch of phlegm, wash, do a self-scan, do stretches. She yanked the scanner back out of storage and scanned herself again. Extremely high levels of Kharaa bacterium. She rapidly flipped through previous results. They showed significantly less infection and were all the same. Exactly the same. Impossible. There should be minute changes everyday.

An hour later, diagnostics concluded that the scanner was fine. It was the PDA. An internal error had prevented her health file from being updated. A weekly system check and reboot had fixed the error last night.

Light. She'd forgotten about the scan she took before she and Venjie took that trip to the Aurora, the one that proclaimed an unknown infection. She cleared her throat. Oh. The dry throat and phlegm every morning. She'd attributed it to the cyclops' environmental system keeping the humidity lower than the hab's. It wasn't lower.

Damn. She should tell Alandris and Ve-

No! She couldn't! It would only add to the stress and tension. There wasn't anything anyone could do, they already had an impossible schedule to save Alandris, and Rekha couldn't stand the thought of Venjie's pity.

Needing hope, she reached for the voice. She strained and struggled, pushing herself to her limit, past it, until she thought her brain might explode.

Little one, soothing waves of thought washed over her. Do not harm yourself.

I needed to remind myself you're real.

I am not a dream.

Then what are you? Rekha demanded, the dream from earlier burning in her skull.

There was quiet. She almost thought the voice was gone, except that her presence remained strong in Rekha's mind. I am alive, came the eventual, unhelpful answer.

Are you one of the aliens? She was certain she wasn't, but she needed something to talk about.

Confusion came through the connection.

Are you one of the beings who brought the disease?

No. I was here before. I would have helped those with the sickness, but they could not hear me; they did not understand. There was a long, sad sigh. I am tired, little one. You must come to me.

I'm trying! But every step, there's a thousand obstacles!

A soft caress buoyed her. You are strong, little one. Your pod is strong. You will find me. She dropped the connection.

Rekha was left panting in the quiet of the garden. She heard Alandris cough thick phlegm from her chest, spit it into a cup that she would clean out at least twice a day. Venjie rose, probably wakened by the coughing. Their morning routines were seen to. Eventually, they found Rekha, still sitting in the garden on her mat.

"Rekha?" Venjie squatted close and put a hand on Rekha's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

She wiped at her face, discovered drying tears and a smear of blood. The steady drum of psi overload was pounding in her skull. "The voice isn't a precursor. She says she was here before them, and she wanted to help them, but they couldn't hear her. That must mean they didn't have any psi potential."

"Then I suppose we're lucky we have you with us." Alandris' voice was ragged and reedy and she wore her blanket tight around her shoulders, yet she managed a smile.

"I also think she's dying." Rekha added. Grief punched her in the gut as she did so. How was it fair that she would meet an incredibly powerful, friendly psionic way out here only for her to die soon after and leave Rekha all alone again?

"Dying?" Venjie asked. "What makes you think that?"

She fought back sniffles. "She keeps saying she's tired. She won't hold the connection long. If she was here before the precursors, she's ancient."

"Could she be lying?" Alandris scratched at her neck.

"Possibly." Rekha shrugged, not giving much to the thought. "But she's somewhere deeper, where we have to go anyway."

Alandris hummed. "Did you finish the depth upgrades last night, Venjie?"

"What I could. The Mark III has an ingredient we haven't come across. Our max depth is only 1300m." A hundred meters short of where the next facility was supposed to be.

"Perhaps it will be enough."

"It's the same for the prawn." Rekha added. "The next upgrade needs the same material."

Alandris nodded. "Venjie, I believe it's your turn on kitchen duty. Rekha, if you haven't already, start doing psi scans of the vicinity."

She did. There wasn't anything different. Point three kilometers, the tunnel remained the same except for the river shifting from yellow to green. Half a kilometer, it forked. Almost twin in size, and neither sensors nor psi could discern much beyond that one sloped down a little steeper than the other.

Rekha looked at her crewmates for their opinions.

Alandris coughed.

"Steeper one." Venjie said.

Alandris made an agreeing gesture.

Rekha nodded, directed the cyclops down the steeper tunnel. It began to curve, continued curving in what felt like a spiral.

"Sensors confirm." Venjie said. "Everything indicates that the tunnel is a natural formation, but it still feels deliberate. Stupid aliens." Her last came out as an annoyed grumble.

Rekha grinned at Venjie's discomfort. She felt similarly. The endless spiral was obnoxious. Limited view, limited psi reach, no knowledge of what to expect, except the worse this planet had to offer. It was easy to blame absent aliens for her uneasiness. Was the tunnel getting narrower? She glanced back, but her crew gave no sign it was. Only her nerves.

Silently, she swore and told herself that this was a job that had to be done. No time for fear. The blood rushing in her ears slowed, yet refused complete calm. Her headache threatened to beat harder. She sighed. What she wouldn't do for some painkillers, a stiff drink, and a beautiful sunny sky.

Two hours and four kilometers later, the tunnel opened abruptly into a large cavern. Not as big as the previous; Rekha could easily sense the opposite wall only a few hundred meters away. And a cliff -chimney- that delved deeper into the planet.

But it was dominated by a tree. A massive tree, old and twisted, like an ancient maple tree on Earth. And the river fell down a twenty meter waterfall, its color a vivid evening blue. It pooled into a giant lake, the glow of which lit the entire cavern.

Huge rays the size of seamoths swam lazily, singing a hopeful melody that was nothing like the haunting song of their mushroom forest cousins.

Rekha found herself relaxing and smiling at the little bubble of calm.

"Incredible," rasped behind her.

"Beautiful," came next.

Rekha nodded. She let the cyclops slow and stop while she watched the hypnotic motions of the rays. They danced about, occasionally brushing against each other, dipping into the lake, and through the tree's gnarled branches.

Her eye caught on the glow from the tree. No. From globes caught within it. The tree itself barely glowed, tendrils of green and yellow.

What were they?

Psi felt around, decided the globes were more oval than round, that there was life inside them. Life, almost sleeping, yet dreamless, unaware.

"Light!" She gaped. "They're eggs!"

"Eggs?" Alandris asked. "You're certain?"

She nodded. "I can sense the embryos." How had they gotten so tightly bound within the tree? Had the tree grown around the eggs? How old were they? How fast did the tree grow? Weeks? Months? Years? She thought back to the old voice, a creature that could potentially be millenia old. How long would eggs of her kind take to hatch? Did they come from eggs? Were there other species that lived hundreds of years too?

"Eggs that size must be from a leviathan." Alandris rasped. "Can you tell which?"

The embryos were soft, their forms indefinite. She didn't think she sensed giant mandibles. "Maybe the ghost."

"Why is one of the most beautiful things we've seen here the spawning grounds for one of the most terrifying?" Venjie complained.

"As much as I'd like scans, let's not linger in case a concerned parent comes to check on them. Forward to the cliff, pilot."

"Aye." Rekha directed the cyclops to the chasm on the other side of the tree.

Cameras on the cyclops' underbelly showed a cascading waterfall that disappeared into a dim red glow.

Sensors indicated an increase in sulphur and temperature.

"The volcanic region?" Venjie asked.

Alandris gestured around them. "Cyclops can handle the heat, correct?"

"Yes." Rekha said. "And we could fab an upgrade that will allow the cyclops to collect heat energy in lieu of power cells. Or at least reduce the drain on them." Constant use of silent running had already depleted five.

Alandris wheezed, the air rattling in her lungs. "Take us down."

"Aye." She glanced longingly at the corridor that sloped up, back to the world of sunlight, sucked in a brave lungful of air, and set the cyclops to descend.

Water temp steadily rose as the blue dissipated. When it was a vague notion above them, the red glow solidified into a river of lava at the bottom of a V-shaped chasm. The chimney through which they were dropping was 100 meters above the chasm's ceiling. The ceiling was 400 meters above the lava river. One end of the chasm was a wall that ran up to the chimney. The other was in gloom that neither psi nor sensors could reach. If there was another end.

The chimney was devoid of life. No rays, fish, or sharks. No leviathans either. It was the only place on this planet that didn't have life. Was that why the precursors built a base down here? The lack of things trying to kill them? She avoided thinking about the dangerous life she'd sensed below. Maybe it was down the other tunnel, the fork they hadn't taken. Maybe they weren't descending into literal Hell. Maybe Alterra would send help and decent comms.

Venjie was noting changes in the rocks that Rekha barely listened to until her voice pitched high. "Gods! Look at those crystals."

Crystals? Where?

"Along the riverbed. They're reflecting the glow."  
Rekha squinted. Oh. There. What her eye had dismissed as glare from the boiling liquid was a massive formation of translucent crystal. It must be four meters high at the peak! Incredible. Now that she knew what to look for, there was a multitude of crystals, few as expansive as that first cluster, yet they dotted the landscape as far as she could see.

"We have to investigate." Venjie said. "They could hold the material we need for the final depth upgrade."

Rekha glanced at the depth gauge. It was already pulsing a warning red, that the sub was nearly at its limit already. The rock beneath was barely two meters away from being deep enough to crush the prawn. "We'll have to use the prawn. Before you harass me about taking risks when I volunteer to go, I am the most qualified. Not only do I know their workings inside-out, I also have hundreds of pilot-hours logged."

Only a few dozen of those were in prawns, on Alterran records. Surely her crew must have guesses about why she was this competent with the cyclops, a vehicle she'd never piloted before, would believe that she was capable of handling the prawn in an extremely hostile environment. They wouldn't need her to spell it out, would they?

Alandris waved an agreeing hand as she coughed into her other.

Venjie's eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned, but she nodded.

Relief puffed from her. "Given the lack of life around here, this might be a good place to rest after I finish my outing."

"We'll revisit that when the time comes," rasped from Alandris.

Venjie nodded again.

Rekha nudged the cyclops into a spot that would drop the prawn on solid ground, powered the engines down, locked her station. She refrained from checking Alandris' water. Venjie could do that. Would. She was as concerned and eager to help as Rekha.

She changed into her suit, pulled on gloves, made sure her mask and peripherals were serviceable. They wouldn't help much if the prawn's seal was lost. She might get five minutes before she was boiled alive. Or crushed. The depth limit on the suits couldn't possibly be accurate. She certainly had no intention of testing them.

In the garden, she opened the docking hatch and levered herself down into the prawn. Her aching feet cooed at the sitting position. She went to close the hatch, found Venjie looking down, her expression stony.

"Something else, Remus?"

"Be careful, Rekha." The prawn's hatch lowered. There came the sounds of the cyclops hatch being sealed. Readouts said she also primed the docking bay for release.

Heart fluttering, she went through pre-launch checks, nodded at the green lights. "Good to go." She reported. "Releasing docking clamps."

"Godspeed," came from Alandris.

The prawn's frame groaned at the sudden change in temp and pressure. Rekha held her breath, tensed to fire the boosters for a quick return to dock. Readouts stayed green. She let air hiss out through her teeth and focused on her landing. A little feathering of the navigation thrusters and she landed with a slight thud. Nice.

As planned, the crystals were only a few meters away, and she had scan results within a few minutes. "Scans say these are kyanite crystals." She reported. "Should I harvest some?"

"We read you. Hold for confirmation." Venjie replied.

Rekha eyed the lava river, the bubbles that formed, popped, spit globules of molten death into the water to flutter back down and start the process again. Occasionally, one would spit high enough to cool slightly. It would either fall back like the others or settle along the banks. Psi was ready to bat it away if it came too close.

"Confirmed." Venjie had only been quiet five minutes. Light, it'd felt like longer. "Kyanite has what we need. Harvest what you can from that outcropping."

"Aye." Rekha powered up the drill arm, let it come to speed before attacking the crystal. A shame to break down such a massive formation. It'd be more of a shame to let Alandris die for the sake of aesthetics. And this was much, much faster than drilling into rock, chasing veins of mineral twined with a dozen others, hoping to get a fraction of what was in front of her face.

Chunks and flakes broke off. Some spun far away, into the lava. Thankfully, most were gathered by the d-pocket's tractor field, saving Rekha the ultra headache of chasing them down later.

"Status report," came Alandris' rasp an hour later.

"Ten kilos collected, captain," was her automatic reply. "Exosuit readouts remain stable and green." A breath. "I don't sense any predators nearby."

"Venjie? Is that enough?"

"Checking." A minute went by. "No. Another ten for the cyclop's Mark III Depth Upgrade. Two for the prawn. I'd like another five for safety margin and possible other uses. While harvest remains a safe procedure, we should get whatever we can."

"I agree." Rekha said.

"As do I." Alandris coughed, spat. "It looks like you've got quite a bit of that outcrop left. Keep going, Rekha. If anything changes, report immediately, otherwise we'll contact you every half hour from here on."

Nothing interesting happened by the time the next report happened. A lava bubble exploded unpleasantly close to Rekha, scared her with a smoldering rock bullet that impacted the crystal, made half of it shatter and explode. The tractor field barely grabbed a third of it. Most spun off into the water or lava. A few attacked her prawn, left dings and scratches in the glass. Or would have. The marks on the glass were smudges. Kyanite wasn't hard enough to scratch a prawn's enameled glass.

She wouldn't report that. Alandris would proclaim the job too dangerous and recall her. There was an obvious, bubbling river right there. Alandris could be watching. If she didn't say anything, neither would Rekha.

Venjie asked for the next report. Harvest figures were given, lack of predators noted. Nothing was said about lava or exploding crystal.

Shortly after, Rekha's stomach began grumbling. It growled angrily during the next report.

"We have more than enough, Rekha. Come in and take a break." Venjie laughed. "I'll make something that isn't ultra gross."

"But there's at least another ten kilos I could h-"

"Get back up here." A sigh. "Alandris agrees. You're outvoted."

She flicked off the drill. "Aye."

"Red gods, she's a t-" the open comm was closed.

On the way back, she paused to pick up a few sizable chunks of kyanite from the earlier explosion. Was there a way to improve the prawn's hull enough to withstand a short dip in lava? Or was it magma? Wasn't the definition something about exposure to air?

Above her, the bay doors were open. She took careful aim and fired the boosters. Her trajectory was off a smidge. She had to use nav thrusters to line up enough for the cyclops' tractor field to capture her and bring her in.

Hmmm. Could the tractor field be reversed in some way to create shielding? Hadn't she read an Exosuit Today article that talked about someone working on that theory? In Delhi, there'd been discussion about amping an H-class enough to use psi as a temporary shield. Rekha had been on the lineup for testing before she'd run.

A rude grin slid across her face at the idea of telling her Martian crewmates that she was weak enough -expendable enough- to be used in experimental testing. Venjie would have an aneurism. Her inner ego argued that she'd been picked because her psi was versatile. Lightless bulkhead. Delhi didn't care about being able to juggle pots of water without spilling. The war machine wanted cannons that could rip into ships and their captains' minds.

Docking clamps locked into place, and the seals hissed. The hatched opened. She looked up at a continued hiss. Steam was billowing into the garden.

That was one way to add moisture to the system. No, it didn't need more moisture. Her itchy throat had a more sinister cause. She blinked, and a sudden sneeze tore out of her. Snot dripped from the prawn wall.

"Dammit."

"Was that a sneeze?" asked above her. Venjie's head peeked in.

Wiping her nose, Rekha sighed. "Must be from the steam." She wiped the wall.

Eyes narrowed, but venjie retreated. "Lunch is ready."

Rekha started to jump up, grab the hatch's lip, and haul herself out as usual. She'd half-jumped, hand up, when she took note of the air shimmering around the hatch. Right. Lava. Superheated water. Prawn hull must be hot enough to cook on. She used the ladder and shied away as the heat tried to singe her eyebrows. Quick as possible, she clambered through, glad for the cyclops' side that was cool enough to touch. Even through gloves, she probably would be singed.

She needed to make gloves and shoes that could withstand the temps, in case she had to take the prawn from lava water to alien facility. Entering and exiting would be brutal.

The smell of food had her hurrying to the hygiene closet. She unloaded, did a quick wash up, and zipped back into her suit. She intended to go back out after a rest.

A hot soup was waiting. It was even palatable, despite the ingredients.

"This is nice. Well done, Venjie." Alandris applauded.

"Not ultra gross," was Rekha's cheeky addition.

Venjie rolled her eyes.

Rekha shot her a grin and dug in. The meal was quiet, decidedly pleasant without the sense of leviathans and sharks right off their bow.

Venjie suddenly put her spoon down. She snapped her head up, spine straight. "I have something to report."

Rekha stared. What was this about?

"I should have this morning, but I," her eyes dipped. She swallowed, and her eyes came back up. "I was scared. My scan this morning reported the Kharaa bacterium in my system."

Rekha's spoon clattered to the table. Her throat tightened. No. Not Venjie.

Terror-filled eyes flicked to her. "It doesn't affect our schedule." There was a tremor in her voice. "We find a cure for Alandris, we find a cure for me."

Fear, despair, anger, they all boiled in Rekha's chest. Silently, furiously, she swore at any god she could think of that this was why she was keeping her own infection silent. Her crewmates didn't need the extra tension and heavy responsibility! Hot air seethed between her teeth.

She couldn't sit there while Venjie pretended bravery and calm, while Alandris tried to hide her sympathy. Her chair scraped across the deck. She stomped from table to prawn and began transferring crystals from prawn to fabricator. Questions and stares came from her crewmates, but she ignored them, kept on with her work until her PDA chimed that she'd provided enough kyanite, that she should begin feeding the rest of the ingredients in.

"What else do you need?" She poked at the list.

"Titanium ingots," came from behind her.

Squeaking, she jumped and turned to face Venjie, who was carrying a dense rod under her arm.

Her lips twitched. "Another ten ingots. We've got it in 'E' locker. Your suit's d-pocket will make the job faster." She brushed by and opened the fabricator's input tray. The rod was lowered in with a grunt. The things were small, yet ultra dense and ultra heavy. "I'll get the other materials."

She stared. Like herself, Venjie kept a short hair style. Shorter. Hers was clipped close all over her skull. It was a fuzzy, awkward mess now, the pinnacle of absurdly cute. It didn't fit this determined woman who stood in front of her, the survivor who'd braved the terrors of this world alone for weeks before finding and rescuing Rekha and Alandris from the wandering island. Who kept pushing forward no matter how terrible things became.

"Rekha?"

Light, she wanted her. Heat crawling up her chest, pricking her eyes, she let her breath hiss out and headed to the ladder.

She gathered the ingots and nearly ran into Venjie when she turned away from the lockers. Bottles clinked from an unsteady pile in her arms. How had she gotten those out without Rekha noticing? She hadn't been that absorbed in her job.

Venjie paused as though to let Rekha proceed her. When Rekha didn't, she shrugged and kept going.

Rekha frowned. Venjie couldn't possibly carry all of those up the ladder without dropping one or falling. "Let me help."

"I have it." Venjie muttered and put a foot on the ladder. The topmost bottle jumped.

Psi caught it before it could hit the floor. Rekha lifted it to read the label. Hydrochloric acid 30%. The bottles weren't likely to break, but could. She didn't want to think about the damage it could wreck on someone, especially Venjie. "Don't be a stubborn bulkhead. Why didn't you bring a crate?"

Venjie started up again. The bottles shifted dangerously.

Rekha plucked all of them out of Venjie's arms with psi and caught Venjie physically when she yelped and lost her grip on the ladder.

"Rekha!"

She ignored Venjie's yelling and her headache to float the bottles up the shaft to the main deck. She sniffed snot trying to escape her nose. "There. Don't have to worry about getting them up the ladder now."

Venjie shoved her away. Her eyes went cold. "Don't get so close. You might get infected." She stormed up the ladder.

Too late. She wiped her nose and frowned at the streak of red on the back of her hand. From psi overload or Kharaa sickness? Both? Growling in frustration, Rekha went up the ladder and focused on what needed to be done. Impossible odds and crewmates be damned.

* * *

A/N - Did I mention that I really loved the fanfic _In Charge_ with its talking ampeels? I don't plan on featuring them. I just really wanted this planet to have multiple intelligent species -multiple sentient!- species. And it helped the scene be even more alien and exotic to Rekha with her background and hatred of this planet.


	15. Painfully Hot Waters

Chapter 15  
Painfully Hot Waters

By itself, the cyclops' depth upgrade took several hours to fabricate and install. The crew considered spending the last few hours of the day camped out, doing maintenance, tending the garden, fretting over time lost. Briefly considered. For the sake of considering. Quick consensus had them pushing forward.

The chasm continued for kilometers, gradually widening as it went. Rekha sensed a sudden blossoming of open space before the cyclops did. A massive open space. Mostly open. Near the edges they could see were pillars soaring from sinister bottom to gloomy ceiling, half a kilometer above, big, black things that glistened in the red glow of lava.

"Incredible," whispered Venjie.

The molten river below them plunged down to the cavern in a rushing, splashing lavaflow that joined a dozen others. Lava pooled in boiling puddles and lakes. Black smoke spewed from a thousand vents, joined floating ash and mineral-heavy water to cloud visibility, make it impossible to see more than a dozen meters forward.

And among it all, fish, sharks, and other strange life thrived.

"Did," Rekha gaped. "Did that fish just swim _through_ the lava?"

"Not possible," came from Alandris.

Not possible? Had she been paying attention to the pinnacle weird that was this planet? Rekha cast a disparaging glance over her shoulder.

"Keep your eyes ahead, pilot."

She set the cyclops on a slow course, straight ahead into the gloom. Her eyes darted from camera to camera, from lavaflow to lavaflow, from weird fish to weirder fish. She barely noticed the veritable mountain looming in front of them until its hulking form nearly swallowed them. The hard bank she forced had the cyclops groaning and the collision sensors screaming.

"I told you to keep your eyes open!" Alandris barked.

Jaw clenched, she growled epithets.

"It doesn't reach to the ceiling." Venjie broke the tension.

What?

"This thing, this _mountain_. It has a power signature. No, Rekha, keep us on a slow course. It might be hollow. I'd like to find a way in."

Nerves jittering, Rekha kept them close until Venjie called out a halt, that sensors had found sign of precursor tech. Squinting, Rekha could see a hint of green in what appeared to be a tunnel mouth ahead and above them. She glanced at her crew. No one would be able to sleep tonight if they left this unexplored until tomorrow.

As she angled the cyclops into position, she stretched her mind, feeling for predators within the mountain. Aggressive, hungry glimpses of several small ones, probably sharks. She turned her mind outward. Nothing new.

"Are we exploring?" She turned around.

Venjie checked the time, shrugged at it. "I'd like to."

Alandris sighed. "I doubt any of us will sleep well if we don't."

"I agree."

Alandris sipped at her water. "Venjie, you've been dancing in your chair for an hour. Go unload."

Venjie was up and dashing for the ladder before Alandris finished.

The cyclops was almost in a good position for a camera to peer into the tunnel. Just a… Rekha frowned at a strange feeling. She did a quick psi sweep and gasped. There was a massive presence coming toward them. _Pinnacle massive_. She cut off the lamps and switched the engine to silent running mode, had the cyclops come to a stop.

"Rekha?" Alandris wheezed from her chair.

_Leviathan_. She replied as the interior lighting switched to red. She brought up the dorsal camera, aimed it in the direction she sensed the presence. A huge shadow moved in the gloom.

Soft footsteps announced Venjie's return. "What is it?"

"Leviathan," was repeated in a whisper.

"I'd hoped we left the ghosts behind." Venjie muttered from her station.

Rekha did her best to determine its physical characteristics. The density of the water and the strange way it felt was making it hard. "I don't think it's a ghost." She frowned. It seemed to have multiple tails and long fins. Oh no. She flashed back to the skeleton under the research facility. Was this one of those? Were those arms and hands, not fins?

_Something new? _Alandris asked.

_I think so._

"What the… cyclops power levels are dropping fast!" Venjie announced.

Power loss?

"How?" Alandris demanded.

"Not sure. I…" she gaped at her displays. "There's minor damage in the hull. Twelve separate locations!"

"Rekha?"

She was already scanning the immediate waters. "There's nothing, no, wait, there's fish. Or some sort of fish?" They weren't that big, less than a meter. No fins. "All over the hull."

"Some kind of parasite feeding off our energy? Rekha, can you remove them?" Alandris wheezed, fell into coughing.

Psi prodded at one of the squishy creatures, found the gills, and stabbed. It detached and scampered away. She did the same with another. "Two off."

"Power drain slowing," reported Venjie.

Rekha methodically removed each parasite, then two more. "Remus, keep an eye on that. More will probably show up."

"Of cour-" She choked. "What is that?"

"What?" she stepped back to let Venjie get closer to the screen.

"That!" The camera feed Venjie was pointing at seemed like one big blur. Was there a tech issue? A fish darted by, clear as could be. Not a tech issue.

"How big is that thing?" Venjie hissed.

The leviathan. Oh. It was big enough that it didn't fit in the camera's frame. The screen blurred, the tentacles vanished. Her eyes flicked to movement seen through the window. Oh no. Mottle greens and reds flashed across the creature, from powerful, teeth-filled jaws, to clawed, terrible hands. Four searing yellow eyes, flaring dorsal sail, whipping tentacles. No tail, yet for all intents and purposes, the thing looked like a dragon. A dragon!

"How does this planet _keep getting worse_?!" Venjie wailed.

Rekha's heart was drumming in her throat. Her eyes were fixated on the veritable dragon that was patrolling the hellscape. It was easily the size of the _Aurora_. Possibly longer. And it was thriving in painfully hot waters, didn't seemed fazed by the bubbling lava or the vents that spiked the temperatures to literally past boiling. How? How wa-

The dragon reared and spit a ball of fire.

"What?!" burst out of her. What the fireball hit, she couldn't tell. It was a black something that the dragon grabbed _with its hand_ and tossed it in its mouth for a snack.

Venjie stumbled backward from the window, right into Rekha. Reflex embraced the trembling body pushing into her. Venjie gasped, turned, flung arms around her, and buried her face in her neck. "Someone tell me I'm dreaming," came her muffled protest.

"I'd appreciate being woken from this nightmare as well." Rekha groaned back.

"I'm going out on a limb here and saying one of those is what wrecked the precursor base." Alandris whispered.

"Yea."

Despite the morbid situation, the feel of Venjie in her arms was like coming home. Her heart buzzed like a prawn drill at the thought, the closeness, the feeling of rightness of Venjie pressing close, warm breath tickling Rekha's neck. She wanted nothing more than to hold Venjie forever, to keep her safe, to comfort her, to love her and get all of that in return.

Frozen, they stood there until the dragon was a faint blur again.

Venjie was the first to move. She stiffened, as though she just realized the position they were in, dropped her arms, and when Rekha dropped her own, took a step away. "My apologies." She mumbled.

Throat too dry to respond, Rekha shrugged.

"Do the cameras see anything?" Alandris sighed.

Not yet. Rekha finished easing the cyclops into position. Two green lamps stood guard in the mouth of a five meter wide tunnel. Both were meter tall structures similar to ones on the island around the precursor base that seemed to serve no other function than lighting the way. Beyond them, the tunnel immediately dipped down.

"Two precursor lamps and a tunnel that goes down." Rekh reported. "I'd suggest dropping the prawn, but we're beyond its depth limit. We need a moonpool to fab another upgrade for it."

"We aren't thinking about going all the way back to the mushroom forest, are we?" Venjie challenged.

"No." Rekha met her gaze. "We don't have time for that."

The fight went out of her. She nodded. "Building here doesn't seem like a pinnacle idea."

"It's been a long day." Alandris rasped. "We need to eat and rest. We'll tackle this problem tomorrow."

Rekha nodded. Her stomach was grumbling, she was thirsty, and her feet ached. She locked the cyclops in place, checked for parasites, removed one. Dinner was a quick endeavor. Fish and kelp salad. After, they separated as usual.

Within ten minutes, Rekha and Alandris were back at the table.

Rekha chose a psi channel to save Alandris the physical effort. _We can speak like this to save your voice._

A smile appeared. _I appreciate that._

_You're welcome_. Rekha's smile was brief. _We don't have time for long, quiet evenings anymore. I'm going to work until my eyes won't stay open._

_Of course you will_, came Alandris' unimpressed drawl.

Rekha kept on. _This area is massive. And with that, that _dragon _swimming around, we won't be able to move quickly. Since we have to build a moonpool for the prawn, we should build a scanner room too. It will save us a lot of trouble._

_Scanner room? _Alandris opened the file on her PDA. _Yes. That's a good idea. Do we have the materials for it?_

_I believe so._

They flicked through their PDAs, looking at blueprints and other ideas. Would designing and building a harpoon gun would be worth the effort? It would have to be massive to do any damage to the dragon. Otherwise it would only make the dragon angry. They didn't have the time or resources to devote. Bad idea. Stealth and speed were the best.

_Venjie is here._ Alandris alerted her.

Rekha looked up from her PDA. "We're discussing options."

"For what?" Venjie took her seat.

"Exploring this place. It might be worth it to build a habitat."

"Do we really need a habitat? We have the cyclops." Venjie asked. "And what if that mountain has the disease facility?"

"Whether the disease facility is in that mountain or somewhere else, we need to upgrade the prawn. Fastest way to do that is to build a moonpool here instead of backtracking home or building elsewhere. I don't think we'll be lucky enough to find the facility in there. I'd love it if we did, but we aren't at the notated depth. Second reason for the habitat is to build a scanner room. Fast exploration by cyclops ceased to be an option the moment we saw that dragon."

Venjie shuddered.

"The prawn will have a hard time navigating with all the lava around, even if we equip the grappling arm. The scanner room's sensors are significantly more powerful than what we have. It can map and search for specific minerals. We might be able to input precursor data, have it search for that before we take the prawn out. The room also has significant energy costs, but that's actually a nonconcern here."

"Why?"

"We have blueprints for a thermal generator. These waters are more than hot enough for a thermal generator to spit out enough energy for two scanner rooms."

Venjie was nodding. "How are we going to build this? I know the dive suits' specs can handle the pressure and temperature for a limited time, but hab building can take hours."

The suits handle this temperature? She'd almost been burned getting out of the prawn earlier! No way. The suits couldn't handle temps of 80 degrees Celsius. Blood would boil in her skull before the first support strut was finished.

_Could you use the builder from the prawn?_ Alandris suggested.

Rekha considered it. Maybe. _We'd have to input directions and attach the hab builder to the arm before launch. I don't know how long it will hold up in this environment. We should be prepared to fab a couple._

At Venjie's furrowed brow, Rekha repeated question and answer aloud.

"Prawn d-pocket can hold all these materials, right?" Venjie held up her PDA with a scanner room's building requirements.

She considered the mass. "With room to spare."

"Room for the thermal generator? If we can build that and the scanner room at the same time, it'd be better."

Rekha cleared her throat again, frowned at the lack of relief, cleared it again, took a drink of water. "I believe so."

Venjie studied her for a long moment, shook her head. "Thermal generator, moonpool, and scanner room. Is that all?"

"We'd need a multipurpose room for the hygiene closet alone. Extra space for long use would be good. I can't think of any other necessary sections. Moonpool and generator are first priorities."

Fingers moved furiously across her PDA. "We're past the prawn's current depth limit. We should rethink going back up a bit, building in that chasm."

"There wasn't much solid ground to build on in the chasm. The prawn barely had enough room to mine. And the closed space might interfere with scanning this chamber. We need to build out here. We aren't so far past the limit that the prawn will immediately implode. I'll have time before the hull gives way. What we don't have time for is building somewhere else only to take it down and rebuild it here."

"Rek-"

Alandris held up a hand. _Can you use psi?_

_For what_?

_Could you stay in the cyclops' cockpit and direct the hab builder?_

Could she? She was probably adept enough to handle manipulating the device. But how would they get the materials to it? D-pocket link was extremely limited in range.

Venjie's fingers drummed on the table.

"Alandris suggested I use psi from the safety of the cyclops. I think I can manipulate the builder from distance, but there's the matter of getting the materials down there."

Thought creased her face. "We could build a standing locker. Can you move one of those from a distance?"

The wall lockers were fused to the cyclops' wall for access to its power source that enabled d-pocket use, but a freestanding one could be moved. They were larger to accommodate their internal battery. Slightly heavier. Not as heavy as a person, yet it would strain her ability, especially with the overload damage she was suffering. Once it was in water, it should be easy enough to maneuver alongside the builder.

"If you fab it by the hatch and leave the builder on it, I shouldn't have any trouble." Rekha said.

_I suggest we build by the lavafalls. _

"By the entrance?"

Alandris nodded.

"There seemed to be pillars and ledges we can hide the base in back there." Venjie said.

Sounded good to her. "We can get this done this evening. Morning, we'll bring the prawn back to investigate this tunnel unless the scanner room finds something overnight."

Consensus reached, they returned to the cockpit. The dragon wasn't causing mayhem nearby. Rekha could barely sense it off in the distance. She set them on a backtracking course. Sweat poured down her face with every thrum of the engine. What if the dragon suddenly came back? What if it heard the engine this time? Came to investigate?

Her nerves nearly exploded before they made it safely to the lavafalls without a dragon attack or some other horror descending upon them. She glanced up at the kilometers of rock above. It could fall at any time, crush them, or worse, trap them until they all died of Kharaa.

"Rekha?"

She jerked out of her trembling thoughts, blinked at her crewmates. "Yes?"

"Direct the cameras to the west. I'd like to see that area again." Venjie suggested.

She did, and they discussed its merits, then other directions and repeated the process until they found a spot they could agree on. She brought the cyclops in as close as she dared.

A locker was built, filled, and a prepped builder set on it. Rekha grabbed the bundle with psi and ported it next to the chosen site. Eyes open, she aimed it. Eyes closed, she felt out the controls and set it to work. The thermal generator went up without a problem.

Psi probed at the builder. Was it cracked? She brought the thing up to the cockpit window, squinted at it. Battery was low. There was a definite crack in the screen. Edges seemed a bit _soft_.

Venjie appeared with a drink, looked like she had a question.

"Hab builder isn't holding up well. I don't think it'll make it much longer."

She nodded, made to leave, turned back. "Rekha?"

The builder chose that moment to give out. A spark of light signaled its death. She sighed and set the thing down. They could retrieve it for recycling after the moonpool was up. "Yes?" She gave her full attention.

Venjies eyes were on her toes. "I…" She sucked in a breath, her gaze coming up. Determination made them glow. "I want to apologize for my behavior last night. I was angry and upset about being infected and I lashed out. You were right to take the bottles from me. If even one had broken, not only would we have lost valuable resources, but one of us could have been seriously injured. I'm not happy with how you went about it, but that's a separate issue."

Rekha stared.

"My reaction was inappropriate. I always overreact when I'm emotional." Her gaze dropped again. "Being near you always makes me emotional." She bit her lip, glanced up.

"Thanks?" puffed out.

Another nod. "I've already fabbed a couple builders." She held one up. "I'll go open the hatch."

"O-okay."

The second builder didn't survive an hour. The third didn't make it through the end of the moonpool. The fourth lived long enough to finish the job and build two power extenders.

Moonpool readings stayed red for an agonizing minute before spinning to green with sufficient power levels.

Rekha brought her results to a yawning crew. A yawning Venjie. Alandris was coughing in bed. "Hull needs reinforcement. A couple days here will crack it like an egg. I can add some after I get the prawn into the moonpool."

"You aren't planning on doing this tonight?" Venjie objected. "It's already 2300!"

By this time, she'd normally have been asleep for an hour. At that thought, a massive yawn overtook her. "No," came through the yawn. "In the morning." She still needed to fab protective gloves and shoes.

Ideas for them spun in her head while she readied for sleep, and they were still spinning when she woke up to Alandris' coughing a few hours later. Her sore throat, gummy eyes, and aching body throbbed in sympathy with every cough. She wanted to roll back over and sleep until next year. That coughing and the mountain of work to do got her up and moving. How did Venjie sleep through it? The woman slept like the dead.

Her feet touched the deck. She flinched out of habit, but after a minute of blinking, she realized that it wasn't icy and she didn't need her shoes. Shoes. Yesterday's ideas snowballed into a cohesive plan. An hour later, she was fabbing high density, heat-resistant gloves and shoes. Based off the reinforced dive suit plans, enlarged to fit over her dive suit, they weren't hard to shape. It was adding the layers of non-conductive material that had been the real difficulty. Difficult, requiring some interesting mental acrobatics, but not impossible.

Thoroughly pleased, she made breakfast with a slight smile.

"You're still cold?" Venjie asked.

Rekha looked up. Venjie was talking to Alandris, who had her blanket wrapped tight, was shivering, looking more miserable than a fish out of water. Venjie was flushed, sweat starting to mat her fuzzy hair. Thinking about it, sweat was beading on her own face, dripping down her spine, making her clothes stick.

_Hungry?_ Rekha asked her sick friend.

Alandris fussed with her blanket. _Yes, but the idea of food makes me queasy._

_I made soup this morning. At least try the broth._ She set bowls in front of her crew. Steam drifted up, was probably what convinced Alandris to spoon a mouthful up.

_It's good._ Alandris tried to smile. It was awful, weak, strained, and looking unpleasantly like a broken grimace.

Rekha focused on her own breakfast. The warm broth felt incredible going down, momentarily soothed her angry throat and sinuses. She was slurping the rest directly from the uplifted bowl when Landris' coughing changed note. Liquid splattered on the deck.

Bowl down from her face, she saw Alandris bent over, heaving. Yellow mess was at her feet, dripping from her mouth. The rancid stench of half-digested goop hit Rekha, and she nearly lost her own breakfast. She had to hold her breath, avert her eyes, get up, and run away.

Half an hour later, Venjie found her sitting by the lockers, head on her knees. "It's cleaned up. I put Alandris back in bed with a crate to catch… there's an empty crate beside her."

"Sorry I ran." Rekha mumbled.

"Our big, bad psionic isn't just scared of small, dark places, she can't handle a little vomit either."

She could! But the smell, oh light, the _smell_.

"It's fine that you ran. Really. I would've hated cleaning up two messes instead of one."

Rekha looked up at the teasing tone. Venjie was offering a little grin.

Venjie jerked her head toward the ladder. "Come on. Get up. You have an impending death by crushed prawn to squeak out of."

Rekha shuddered at the mental image. Why'd she have to put it that way?

A bare foot nudged at her. It was in sore need of a pedicure and moisturizer. "Get up."

"Yes, cap'n." Rekha grumbled. She cast a glance at her own poorly kempt feet and rose. "I love starting my days with vomit and impending death."

* * *

A/N - The game talks about the Kharaa being awful. Degassi crew logs said it was like the flu. Scanner says it makes everything super aggressive. But the pc doesn't really show anything except the green dots mid-game. It left a lot to the imagination. A game mechanics thing I suppose.

I like working with extra aggressive fauna, but not for the human crew. Awful respiratory response and fevers, then vomiting sounded much better.

Same thing with the game mapping. I can't imagine this giant dragon living in such a cramped area as the game portrays. It's like the equivalent of a shark in a fish tank, even that giant one at the zoo. My fic needed more space. More tunnels :)


	16. Not a Scratch

Chapter 16  
Not a Scratch

_I'm going down in the prawn now._ Rekha told Alandris as she passed by.

_Suit up_. Alandris ordered. _If the prawnsuit is breached, I want you as protected as possible._

She always wore her dive suit in the prawn. _Of course._

_Full gear, Rekha. Tanks and rebreather._

Full gear. Why hadn't she thought of that? _Yes, ma'am. _Because she wouldn't live long after a breach.

"Good idea." Venjie said as Rekha shrugged on her tanks. She helped with settling them, checked gauges and the suit for maintenance, welded a loose seam. "I'm glad the designers accounted for pilots getting in and out in full gear. It's made our lives our lot easier."

"You'd think people who thought up the prawn would've thought up a clean way to unload in it too."

Venjie was pushing aside a tree branch to get to the hatch. Lantern fruit dangled everywhere, threatened to fall into the prawn. "I'm trying to be positive over here."

"It's a beast of a machine. I won't need all this gear."

"Thank you."

A brief grin softened her mood before she tugged her mask on. Venjie checked that too before she let Rekha put a leg on the ladder.

"Green to go. Don't pull any fool moves out there, exohead. Bring this bucket back in one piece!"

Laughter burst out. Those were Rekha's own words, ones she'd yelled at idiot pilots regularly, were never listened to. The bulkheads always found a way to break her prawns on the simplest of missions. Well, that deserved the regular response she always got. "Aye, crew chief! Not a scratch on your baby!"

Their crew chief never failed to shoot Rekha an irritated glance at that. A nice enough person, but a terrible chief. Rekha did all the hard work. Prepped the logs, did the inventory, assigned details. But she always signed Rekha's requisitions. She consulted Rekha before briefings. She knew she was shit at her job, that Rekha's hard work kept her there. She also knew that Rekha didn't want the job and didn't complain. She'd given Rekha a fine bottle of smuggled Iolian Cognac for last Charter Signing Day.

Something about the volcanic nature of Io imbued the cognac with unparalleled deliciousness. Light, the crew chief must have used her entire good-year-bonus to buy it. Or known someone who owed her a pinnacle favor. She hadn't explained. Rekha hadn't asked. She'd thanked the woman and taken the bottle back to her bunkmates to get stupid drunk that night.

Rekha settled in the prawn's seat. Systems lit up green. She knew exactly which way to start pushing the prawn. Ready. She hit the comms. "Green to go."

"Go."

Fear tickled up her spine. Dozens of meters below its max range, the prawn could collapse like a souffle at any moment. Just one crack would let in boiling water.

Gritting her teeth, she hit the release button. The prawn dropped through the stasis field and immediately groaned its complaints. Depth warnings blared. As it fell, Rekha directed it toward the moonpool. Only a few meters away. She would make it.

The prawn hit the bottom. Nothing exploded. Or imploded. She pushed it forward, its jarring walk as obnoxious as her pounding heart. Four meters away, a crack appeared in the glass, slowly spidering from top to bottom. Three meters, plasteel shrieked and buckled.

"Warning. Hull breach detected." The prawn warned. Internal temp began to rise. She jerked around, looking for water. She felt it first. Not directly on her right thigh, but close enough to feel the heat. Water was pooling under her feet.

"Focus!" she yelled at herself. "Forward!"

Around her, the prawn continued groaning, shrieking, and crackling. More hull breach alerts sounded. The right leg started to gum up. It gave out right under the moonpool. Luckily, one leg and boosters was enough to get the prawn in the moonpool's reach. Magnetic arms locked on and brought her up.

The glass shattered, _exploded_. Rekha screamed as shards ripped through her suit and opened her flesh. Glass _tinked_ everywhere when she dropped her arms. Instinct must have brought them up to protect her face. They were covered in a dozen bleeding stripes now. Around her, the prawn continued crackling, groaning, hissing. Steam billowed around the moonpool in a swirling cloud. Below, water boiled against the moonpool's stasis field.

The way the prawn was drawn in, she couldn't jump out where the glass had been. Correction. She could. If she wanted to leap into the deadly water below. She looked up at the prawn's hatch, tried to open it with psi. It wouldn't budge. Dammit. She pulled her new gloves and shoes from storage, whimpered in pain as a thousand cuts protested her movements. Her hands reached hesitantly for the hatch.

"_hiss-_kh-_crackle_-p-_hiss_-rt," came from the busted radio.

_I made it_. She reported to Alandris. _Radio's out. Prawn needs repair._

_Red gods_, puffed at her. _We saw bubbles._

_Had a few leaks. Not a problem._

_Not a problem… _Alandris grumbled, went quiet as she probably spoke aloud to Venjie. _Commence repairs. I want hourly reports._

_Aye._ Rekha dropped the channel to stare at the hatch. "Let's get started."

Even through the gloves, she could feel the heat. She let the back of her hand touch the hatch for a second. No sizzling pain. A second, longer test was uncomfortable, but not intolerable. Good enough. She gripped the handles and heaved.

It groaned, but didn't move. Several sweaty minutes passed without any change.

"It's like the island all over again. An injured weakling struggling with broken Alterran tech." She gave another heave. "But I don't have lube or a Martian soldier to rescue me."

Puffing, she sat back, rubbed at her shoulder. What were her options? Laser cutter? No. Left it on the cyclops. Climb out and clamber along the hull? One slip could have her body making an unpleasant amount of contact with the hull. Or falling. Barely viable option. Fix it? Welder was in her d-pocket. Yes! Fifteen minutes later, the handle spun with ease and the hatch released.

Her knee touched the rim as she climbed out. She squeaked at the burn, lost her grip, and fell off the prawn, landing with a _whuff_ on the docking ramp.

"Ow," came out when she finally caught her breath.

She glared up at the crumpled prawn from her prone position. A yawn escaped. Good thing it wasn't comfortable or she'd close her eyes for a nap.

Get to work. No time to lay about like an Alterran. Grunting, she sat up, took off her gear between yawns. Not enough sleep last night. Not going to get enough tonight either. Sleeping long nights could be a thing again after they found a cure for Alandris, for Venjie, for herself. Time to work.

Where to start on the prawn? The glass, obviously, was gone. Every inch of the hull looked hammered, ripples and bends across the plasteel. Several open seams. The right leg was missing below the knee. Rekha frowned into the waters, fished around with psi, and brought the twisted mess up. It shrieked and twisted further in the cool air. The hab builders and locker waiting on the bottom complained similarly. She shoved it all in the recycler.

"Glad I stowed extra materials." She muttered into the steam. First though, she pulled out a builder and started on the moonpool console that allowed upgrades, maintenance, and aesthetic changes. When that was done, she put in the materials for the depth upgrade and started the fab.

Her injuries started to complain louder. Most were shallow enough to ignore, a few might have glass in them. Annoyed, she pulled out a medkit and grumbled about a better life as she stripped out of her suit. Scanner confirmed that glass remained in four places. Two pieces came out under her fingers. Psi had to get the rest.

"Suppose I'm lucky." She glared at bloody glass cubes. "If this wasn't safety glass, I would've been torn to shreds." Safety glass specs kept it from shattering in thin slivers. Sharp, but infinitely less dangerous when flying at high speeds.

_Alandris._

_Report._

_Got the dock console up. Depth upgrade is fabbing._

_Were you injured?_

_A few cuts. Nothing major._ She sprayed sealant on the worst cuts, hissed.

_Explain._

Rekha sighed. _Glass shattered as soon as it was out of the water. A few pieces went through my suit. I've removed them and sealed the injuries. I'm not inhibited or in major distress._

_Estimated time for repairs?_

She consulted her PDA. Seven hours was its suggestion. She eyed the prawn. _Four hours._

_Get to it. Continue hourly reports._

_Aye._

Injuries were sealed and wrapped, then her suit got repairs. Despite her body's protest, she put it on for access to the d-pocket and started work on the mangled prawn. About half of the scattered glass was found and given to the welder to fuse. The remainder came from stored material. Same with the hull breaches. Repairs required a little fresh lithium, plasteel, and aerogel. She barely remembered to set an hour alarm before she totally zoned into work.

Her next report was given via psi. The third was by radio. By the fourth, she'd completed the majority of repairs and was ready for lunch and a break.

"Alandris didn't tell you she's puked three times since breakfast, did she?" Venjie said.

"No."

"At this rate, she'll be a dry husk in two days. She needs a saline drip. I'm going to fab a growbed so I can cannibalize the tubing. A needle should be easy enough to fab." Venjie's fingers drummed noisily on metal. "I'll have to make Alandris stab it in herself. An old soldier like her should know how to do something that archaic."

Rekha swallowed. "I'm sure she does. If she can't, I'll figure it out when I get back over there."

"If you weren't you and psionic, I'd think you were patronizing me."

"I'm glad you know I'm not."

"Yea. Look, how are repairs coming?"

Rekha glanced at the hanging prawn. It had two legs again, smooth glass, and zero hull breaches. A few bubbles remained. "It's far enough along that the depth upgrade will complete the job when it reworks the hull."

"You have supplies to get you through the day?"

Food. Water. Material to start building the scanner room. She could do it from the comfort of the moonpool. She stifled a yawn, cleared her throat. "Yes. I'm good."

"Take a break. Eat. I'll be here for your report in an hour."

"Aye, mom."

Venjie made an annoyed noise and cut the comms.

Without her voice, Rekha's ears filled with the static of electronics. She almost reopened the comm channel. Even Venjie telling her off for being a bulkhead would be better than being alone.

Rekha slapped herself. "Get a hold of yourself, Sharma. You've got a job to do." She pulled out her lunch. "Of all the women you could've fallen for, it had to be a light-forsaken Martian. Alterran-Martian. Worst possible combination. Your dumb ass should've found a Mongolian freighter to work on." She eyed the dried fish in her hand. "The food would've been a hell of a lot better."

Delhi and Mongolia had a few trade agreements. Mongolians weren't as adverse to revised people as Alterrans or Martians; Rekha might have had a chance with a Mongolian woman. Her appetite died. Nose wrinkled, she forced the fish down her throat, then some dried kelp, and drank a third of a bottle of water.

"Lunch is over. Go to work."

Vertical, her bladder said hello.

Dammit. She unzipped her suit and straddled a corner of the bay. Knuckles going white as she held onto the docking ramp, she unloaded over boiling water.

Maybe the multipurpose room with its hygiene closet needed to come first. She stepped back, misplaced her foot, tripped on her suit, and fell into the water.

Almost fell in. Her hand, arm, and shoulder screamed at the sudden jolt, but she managed to keep her grip on the docking ramp.

"Damn this planet!" Fury raged at her situation while she hauled herself up. It continued raging as she zipped back into her suit, yanked out her builder and started work on the multipurpose room. The monotonous work and sleepy yawns cooled it by the time she started on the scanner room. Dinnertime saw the habitat finished.

Rekha jumped into the prawn and tried not to remember the sound of shrieking plasteel and the exosuit trying to implode on her. The five minute trip to the cyclops was uneventful. While the docking arms were situating the vehicle, she used psi to check for parasites and get rid of them. Venjie greeted her at the hatch.

"Welcome back."  
Rekha yawned, jerked at the pull on a cut, and sighed.

"A few cuts," Venjie grabbed Rekha's jaw to push her head back and lower bandaging for a clear view of the gouge along her neck. "This could have killed you."

"It didn't."

Venjiee sneered. "I suppose you have more hidden under your suit too."

Rekha brought out a smirk. "Are you finally asking me to take my clothes off?"

"Yes. Go clean up. You stink and dinner will be ready soon." She strode away.

Definitely should have gone to Mongolia.

Alandris wasn't at the table. She was wheezing in bed when Rekha passed through, a tube leading from arm to a bag hanging from the wall. Green pustules peppered her arm, climbed up her neck, were threatening to take over her face. Her hair was a tangled mess. All semblance of her once neat tail was a frizzy memory.

_Looks like Venjie figured out how to get fluids in you._

_I had to stick the needle in myself. _Alandris grumbled. _After the Grass Moon War, I didn't think I'd ever have to do that again._

_Sorry._

She snorted, then looked Rekha over. _You look like shit._

_Thanks._

_I'm glad you're here to look like shit. Now, go eat so you have enough fuel to keep going._

Her answer was a yawn and smartass salute. Food and Venjie was waiting at the table. She took her chair and dug in.

"I managed to get a little broth in Alandris this afternoon. It stayed down for an hour."

Only an hour? That wasn't good.

Venjie grimaced. "Her other end will probably follow suit soon, not that there's much inside her to go."

"I set the scanner to search for precursor tech before I left." Rekha spoke around a surprisingly sweet bite of fish. This was new.

"Expected."

"Is this a new fish?"

"Energy parasite."

Rekha's head jerked up so hard her teeth snapped. "What?" She'd gone _outside_ to fish? How was she not one giant burn bubble?  
"Used a propulsion cannon to grab one through the stasis field. Scanner said it was edible. I got a couple more." Venjie shrugged. "They're not bad."

"Oh."

A nod. "Alandris and I were talking about whether to move into the habitat." She looked around. "I could use a change of scenery."

"It'd be easier for Alandris to get from bed to hygiene closet."

"She insists she could keep her eyes open and monitor the scans."

Harsh coughing came from the other room. They both winced.

"If she wants to go, I'll take her." Rekha said.

"Okay. If she goes, I'll need to go with her."

"Nurse Remus." Rekha grinned. "Maybe you missed your calling."

She grimaced. "No. I'd rather clean gunked up coolant pipes over puke any day."

The last bite of fish went down with a scrape of salad. "Then good thing this is only temporary." She rose with her dishes.

Venjie eyed her before cleaning her own plate. "Your optimism doesn't wane, does it?"

She couldn't afford it to anymore. "I'd have offed myself a long time ago if it wasn't for Alandris."

Dishes clattered as Venjie nearly dropped them. "No."

_Mommy!_ and the cries of the _Sunbeam's_ crew echoed in her skull. "I'm going to see what Alandris' decision is."

"Yes," croaked at her the moment she stepped close. "I was listening."

"Okay."

Venjie nodded beside her. "Take enough to rebuild her bed. I'll gather more for a few comforts while I'm waiting for you to come back."

"Power cell charger is high on the list."

"Yes. So is a radio, food, water, chairs, and fabricator."

"Do we have enough to build another water filter?"

"Possibly."

Rekha left Venjie to it, gathered materials for two beds, a chair, radio, and had an epiphany about fabbing a rolling bag stand. Alandris wouldn't be tied to the bed because of her saline bag. She went to share her idea.

_Oh good. I intended to train for a marathon while you're off exploring the mystery deep_, was Alandris' bitter reply.

_It's always good to have goals, old woman._

She wheezed what might have been a laugh. It quickly morphed into a hacking cough that left her pale and gasping.

_If a lung comes up, I'm going to keep it as a memento_.

A wicked glare was thrown at her.

Venjie yelled up from below about not enough titanium for everything. Rekha yelled back what she'd put in her inventory and her idea for the bag stand.

"Guess I'll break down a few things." Venjie noted when she came up. "Alandris, you ready?"

A nod. She gathered her small crate to her chest and walked slowly behind Rekha. Venjie trailed with the saline, then held the crate while Alandris eased down the ladder and into Rekha's lap.

"Rekha, grab these." Crate and bag were held out for psi to take.

_A few cuts. _Alandris grumbled. _There's a lot of blood in here. _On the seat, on the ladder, on the hatch.

_A few bad cuts. A lot of little ones._

_You are insufferable._

"Safe trip," called down.

"Be back soon." Rekha replied.

The hatch closed, and Rekha did her best to make the trip as smooth as possible. Vile smelling liquid came out of Alandris anyway. Without mercy, the stench hit Rekha's gag reflex. She urped, felt her dinner try to leap up her throat. Bitter self-control swallowed it back down.

_Sorry, little girl._

_Not your fault._ Rekha struggled with stench and gagging until the prawn was docked. She threw the hatch open.

_Put these on. They'll protect from burns._ The heavy-duty gloves were dangled in front of Alandris. _I'll get the shoes on your feet._

As fast as possible, she got Alandris up the ladder, keeping psi at the ready like a pair of steadying hands. Thankfully, they were unneeded. Gloves and shoes were transferred to Rekha, and she hopped out, went to the multipurpose room with builder out and ready.

Within an hour, there was a bed, fabricator, rolling bag stand, radio, and water filter. Venjie might argue the need. Their water stores were low, but not alarmingly, not for normal usage. Three sick people was not a normal situation. Nor was a habitat that had her sweating like an Olympic runner. Speaking of, she was thirsty.

The lone water bottle in storage gave up a trickle that her throat barely registered. Another hour before the filter started producing. Damn.

_Time to go and get more._ Chapped lips smacked at her.

_Sorry. I should've thought about it._

_Quit being sorry. You built a filter. Go get our engineer, and we can start planning your next adventure._

With a guilty grimace, she nodded and clambered back into the prawn, clomped over to the cyclops, and stopped venjie before she jumped down. "I forgot water. Filter won't be re-"

"I've got four liters on me," interrupted her.

A bottle was tossed down. She drank greedily, let out a satisfied puff.

"After you left, I was thinking about how quiet and hot the sub was. Between the heat and stress, I realized that I was drinking a lot more than I thought." Venjie was on the ladder. "A filter in the hab is a good idea."

She nodded, unable to unclench her jaw. Venjie was settling into her lap.

"Can you pilot like this?"

She swallowed. "Yes."

Quiet followed them. Tense, heavy quiet that made the five minute walk painfully long. Would time alone with Venjie ever be anything but? After they found a cure, there was likely to be months more ahead of them, waiting for rescue. There had to be a way to cut the tension.

Docking arms clunked, and the prawn shuddered into a secure position. Venjie immediately rose and reached for the hatch with her bare hands.

"No!" Rekha yanked her down by the hips.

"Red gods! What?" Anger barked.

"Put these on." Her hands locked tight, psi held up gloves and shoes.

Venjie twisted to look at her. "Why?"

"Because the hull is hot enough to melt the skin off your bones." And Venjie wasn't even wearing a dive suit.

"I thought these things were designed to withstand temperatures beyond this."

"They are." Environmental controls broke down around 200C. The prawn itself was probably fine up to 800C, near the melting point of silica. Though at these pressures, those numbers would be skewed. "The handles aren't bad, but the exterior will take hours to cool down from 80C."

The accessories were taken, put on. "I'll be careful getting out."

She sucked in a breath.

A hand touched hers. "Rekha." Venjie's tone was gentle. "You can let go now."

She yanked her hands away, held them tight to her sides, tighter when she noticed them trembling.

Venjie was waiting on the ramp when Rekha hopped out. The accessories were held up. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Steam swirled and played around them. Sweat dripped down her spine.

"Rekha?" Her jaw worked.

Rekha waited until a massive yawn overtook her.

"Nevermind," was mumbled. Venjie turned away, striding toward the sound of coughing.

Water was being sipped when Rekha plodded in. A bottle from Venjie was in Alandris' pale grip. The filter showed only 60% completion.

"Did you check what the scanner found?" Venjie asked.

Alandris shook her head.

"No." Rekha said. _Didn't feel up to the walk?_

_Not without a chair waiting for me. Build me one in there._ Did Alandris even know how to ask politely? Everything was a command with her. Venjie too.

_Am I to carry you in as well, mistress_?

Alandris' expression sharpened, raked over Rekha. _Don't take your frustration with Venjie out on me._

Air was sucked in, let out through teeth. _My apologies, Dr. Harrington._

_And don't start treating me like a stranger either. I hate asking for help as much as you hate small places._

_You don't ask so much as command and expect to be obeyed._

Her sharp expression tightened. _I am your commanding officer._

"I'm glad you two can speak more than three words without Alandris having a coughing fit." Venjie broke in. "But if you can't speak without fighting, maybe you shouldn't at all. Don't glare at me because I'm the voice of reason. Act like adults."

Rekha tried to up her scowl, but a yawn overtook it.

"By adult, I mean solve your problems. Take a damn nap, Rekha!"

This time, she managed her scowl. "We don't have time for naps."

As though to emphasize her point, Alandris started gagging, then heaved into her little crate.

Time to see what the scanner had found. Rekha stormed out of the room, back through the moonpool, to the scanner room. Taking up most of the room was a holographic display. Most of the enormous cavern had been mapped. Pillars, alcoves, dips in the seafloor, and the mountain in the middle. What seemed like several tunnels existed within it. Seeing beyond a few meters was impossible, but it did register a strong precursor signal coming from within it.

Another blinked from over a 100 meters below it. Weak, fuzzy, the signal jumped within a wide triangulation. Too much interference to pinpoint. It could be directly below the mountain or herself and anywhere from a 100 meters away to 300. There wasn't an obvious path of descent. Several dips seemed promising, but exploring them all could take days! Weeks!

Alandris didn't have that long! None of them had that long. Frustration roared and wanted something to kick. She needed a chair.

No. Alandris needed a chair. To rest in while she and Venjie worked with Rekha to explore all these possibilities. Rekha pulled out the builder and a few minutes later, a chair was ready. No sooner had it finished materializing than both women appeared in the doorway.

_I'm sorry for my attitude, Alandris. You were right. I'm angry and frustrated. It wasn't right to take it out on you._

The older woman sighed and sank into the chair. Her bag swung to a stop above her on the pole. She glared at the display for a long moment before coughing. She took a sip of water. _Thank you. I apologize as well. I get even more overbearing when I'm scared and angry and feeling helpless._

Relief sighed from Rekha, and she touched Alandris' shoulder. Scarred fingers pat her own. Relationship patched, Rekha swung her focus to the job in front of them.

* * *

A/N - every time I sit down to write Venjie, I just want to kick her. that's normal, right? being annoyed with your own characters?


	17. Gooey Cheese Sandwich

Chapter 17  
Gooey Cheese Sandwich

More than one mountain had been the site of Delhian training camps. Rekha had climbed in nearly all manner of weather -by foot and exosuit- even in hostile territory, but not a kilometer below the surface, not in a hostile _dragon's_ territory. She'd normally be looking forward to this kind of excursion. Climbing up, seeing the view at the top, breathing in that crisp, clean air at the summit was a thrill.

This, well, this would be a thrill too. A horror-holo thrill. Rekha scrubbed at her face. They'd been studying the scanner's readings and discussing them for over an hour.

"The dragon is patrolling too close." Venjie was arguing. "And you can't stop yawning. If you go now, you'll get yourself killed."

Rekha opened her mouth to argue and yawned.

_You're pretty good at proving points._ Alandris prodded.

"I won't be able to sleep long with that mountain begging us to find answers!"

"Then I'll get up when you do to help guide you, but, Rekha, you need sleep."

Alandris nodded, coughed, hacked up a wad of nasty, spit it into her little crate. Her upper body convulsed, and she heaved up a mouthful of yellow liquid. Spittle trailed from her lips as she sat panting over the crate.

"Go back to the cyclops." Venjie sighed. "Crawl in bed. Do not set an alarm. Sleep. When you wake up, radio us."

"You need sleep as much as I do." Rekha countered. "If you're awake, I sh-"

"My duties require a good deal less hyperawareness. I don't need to pilot an exosuit around rivers of lava, dodge a dragon, and find a way into an alien base to look for answers."

"When I get back in that prawn, I'm going to…" yawn. She couldn't stop it.

_Go get some sleep before you get us all killed._ Alandris snapped.

Anger burned away the yawn. "I can do this!"

Venjie sneered. "Alandris agrees with me, doesn't she?"

The elder woman nodded.

"Crew consensus. Go. Get. Some. Sleep."

She stared at them, impotent fury seething through her teeth. They glared back. She whirled, stormed to the prawn, slammed the hatch. Her fist punched the release, and her anger reveled in the prawn's clumping movements. At the cyclops, she heaved herself out to stand glaring at the garden. The explosive need to somehow release her raging emotions had her sprinting across the deck to her bed, grabbing a pillow, and screaming into it. Every epithet and curse she could think of was poured into the pillow until she stood there panting.

There wasn't time to sleep! Why couldn't they see that? Another breath of rage threw the pillow at the bed. The bed. It was different. Smaller.

She peered around. Venjie's locker was gone, so was Alandris'. And her bed. Oh. Venjie must have done some recycling. Materials were being stretched thin down here. At the thought of recycling, her body informed her that it needed time in the hygiene closet to unload and refresh. Stupid bodily needs. Couldn't it tell she was trying to be furious here? She stomped to the hygiene closet.

Twenty minutes later, she felt a good deal lighter. Cleaner. The day's worth of rancid sweat was gone. Most of her anger and frustration had been taken with it. What was it about a shower that helped clear the mind? She sat on her bed and stared at the empty spaces where her crewmates used to be. It was terribly lonely. It was also beautifully quiet. No coughing or gagging or arguing. The only sounds were her breathing, the hum of the environmental controls, and the whisper of greenery in the garden.

Her eyelids drooped. Another yawn escaped. The bed was awfully comfortable. Maybe she could get a few hours sleep. She would perform better with a decent night's rest. Yes. The pillow was much more comfortable under her head than pressed into her face. Her eyes closed. Just a few hours. Then she would get up and do her job.

* * *

Coughing woke her. Her groggy mind fumbled at the sound. It wasn't Alandris' recent hacking. It was softer, more an irritated puff than a real cough.

Her chest contracted. She coughed again.

Her? It was… oh. She sat up, slapping a hand to mouth to muffle it before her crewmates heard. She glanced worriedly at Venjie, who wasn't there. The other half of the bed was gone too, as was Alandris and her bed. Right. The new habitat. She stopped trying to muffle the cough and grabbed some water.

Throat soothed, the cough retreated. She knew it wasn't gone for good. It sat waiting like a cat, coiled and ready to leap at unsuspecting prey.

She shook her head of that unpleasant thought. How long had she slept? She opened her PDA. It was 0400, which meant she'd been out for… she ticked off the math on her fingers. Eight hours.

"How?"

Quiet answered her. How many nights had Alandris' coughing broken her sleep now? Too many. Well, she was rested and ready to go. She'd make breakfast and take it to her crew.

She checked their rations. Only a couple days' worth. A couple salted fish, the ones with giant eyeballs. If she closed her own eyes, the protein-rich eyeball wasn't that bad, but look at the thing while eating, and she couldn't keep it down.

What kind of life was out there now? She reached with psi, felt a few sharks, a ton of parasites, a scattering of others. A scanner was grabbed, and she went to the hatch. She pulled off all the parasites clinging to the hull, brought them in, then started dragging a few of the others by to scan. Nothing else was edible. Oh well. Time to get going.

Something new darted by the hatch. Reflex grabbed it. A boomerang. Well, a boomerang-shaped fish. They were pretty decent eating, but she hadn't seen one since delving into the deep tunnels. And this one, it wasn't exactly inviting. It looked encrusted with obsidian.

The scanner took its sweet time deciding if the new boomerang edible. It had obsidian for scales and skin so thick and tough it could pass for plasteel. Several minutes later, scans penetrated the meat and proclaimed it edible, then warned against ingesting the internal organs. Good enough.

She caught another one and took both to the kitchen where she tossed them in the fabricator for it to remove the skin, bones, and internal organs. The remaining pink meat was cut into filets and tossed in a pan. While it cooked, she harvested a melon and started slicing it up. She had to pause to increase the heat on the fish. At a temp that would have any other fish smoking and turning black, this one started to turn a firm white. Why was this planet allowed to violate the normal laws of nature?

Melon chunks were dropped in a small crate, the fish served on a plate and set atop. Several lantern fruit and parasites were shoved in her d-pocket. There wasn't any food in the habitat. She eyed a pot holding a potato plant. The whole thing could go. Should probably grab some hull reinforcement materials too. The material lockers didn't give up much. Hopefully, it'd be enough.

Rekha put on her heat gloves and shoes, jumped into the prawn, and used psi to bring the breakfast crate and potato pot to her lap.

"Good morning," she called out when she docked in the habitat. "I brought breakfast."

There wasn't an immediate response. They must be sleeping. She clambered out.

"Are we having potatoes?" Venjie asked from the doorway.

"You could, but I brought a cut melon and cooked fish."

Venjie yawned and rubbed her eyes, came closer to peer inside the crate. "Smells good."

"Think Alandris might eat?"

The cute, sleepy look vanished. "Not fish."

Chest-breaking coughs exploded from the other room. Rekha's throat thrummed in sympathy until the coughing was replaced with gagging.

"Let's eat here." Venjie gestured at the floor. "We can save her some melon to try."

Rekha folded and put her back to the wall. She held the fish between them. "I didn't think to bring another plate or forks. My apologies."

Venjie joined her. "It's fine, Rekha." She picked up a morsel, tossed it back. "Not bad."

"It's a cousin to the boomerangs, but it has obsidian for scales."

"Incredible."

The fish slowly disappeared, the melon following at the same pace until five chunks were left.

"I think the steam is helping her." Venjie broke the quiet. "Her coughing isn't quite as bad. Or maybe I should say, she seems to go a little longer between fits." She rose. "I'll go get her."

Without ceremony, Alandris dumped her crate's contents into the moonpool. A little water was poured in it, swished around, dumped out.

_Good morning._

Bloodshot eyes flicked to her. _You look less like shit._

_We saved you some melon if you'd like._

Alandris glanced at the chunks. She picked up one and bit it in half. Her cheeks and jaws moved as she sucked on it. _Don't know if it'll stay down, but it tastes a hell of a lot better than stomach acid._

_Okay. Let's see if the scanner has found anything new._

It hadn't. Not of precursor tech. If there was more to the cavern that what it had mapped, it was beyond its range.

They were going over the plans they'd made yesterday when the radio buzzed. Their heads jerked up at the same time. They stared at the light indicating a waiting message.

Venjie got to it and hit play first. It was a staticky message from Alterra that had only managed to reach them by bouncing from their island habitat to the main habitat, to the cyclops, then to this habitat.

Some jerkoff in a comfy corporate facility went on about Alterra not being able to come out to the middle of nowhere, that the survivors would have to meet them halfway. Blueprints for a Neptune rocket launcher should be available in the _Aurora's_ computer core. In the background, another desk jockey wanted the transmitter's lunch order. They argued about inanities that reminded Rekha how little most Alterrans gave a shit about anyone but themselves. The argument finished with talk of a ham and cheese sandwich.

"Go back to the _Aurora_?" Venjie huffed.

Mmm. Cheese. When was the last time she'd had cheese?

"Couldn't even pretend to give a damn." Alandris wheezed. "Alterra can't meet us out here? We have to meet them _halfw-_?" Her anger cut off into coughing that left her bent over and gasping again.

What Rekha wouldn't give for a gooey cheese sandwich, all melty and hot. Yea. A grilled cheese sandwich with spicy tomato soup and a tall, frothy mug of beer. Absently, she scratched at an itch. Her dad used to make an amazing tomato soup. Fresh, pureed tomatoes, sauteed garlic and onion, all sorts of spices, and ghost pepper. Or her grandmother's _biryani_. That was sublime. Old Indian traditions in cooking were far superior to the tasteless muck that prevailed in Alterra.

"Rekha?"

She blinked, mind still on food. "Hm?"

"Have you heard anything we've said?"

Sight flicked from one woman to another. "Was there something more than complaining?"

"Rekha!" Venjie gasped accusingly.

Anger shifted to frustration then idle amusement on Alandris. "She has a point."

"Alandris," Venjie objected.

"Complaining hasn't helped our situation thus far." Alandris gestured with a hand. "All hard work, not f-" she fell to yet another coughing fit.

Rekha clenched her fists while she watched her friend struggle to breathe. Yesterday's frustration boiled afresh. They were so close! So close to finding the voice that promised help. Yet so far. Reapers were nothing compared to the horrors down here. The dragon probably had reapers for breakfast!

A green pustule on Alandris' cheek looked ready to pop. Rekha resisted the urge to clear her throat for the thousandth time. At least Rekha's infection hadn't been noticed by her crew yet. Them knowing that she was on death row as well wouldn't help. Stress and tension levels would only increase, like they were now with the news from Alterra that they had to build a _rocket._ Then, travel for over a month on whatever rations they could stuff aboard before Alterra could be bothered to meet up with them. Oh, but first, they had to retrieve the blueprints from the ultra-dangerous wreckage that was the _Aurora_, because the classified schematics couldn't be broadcasted_._ Nails dug into her palms.

_Do not give up hope, _whispered in her mind.

_I'm trying not to._ She responded to the old voice.

_You will find me. You and your pod will live_, soothed her.

_Thank you_.

The presence vanished. Rekha managed to release her fists, yet they trembled. Soft hands touched hers. She lifted her gaze to Venjie.

"Rekha," pleaded with her. For what, she didn't know, and she wasn't going to touch Venjie's mind to find out. Venjie hadn't invited free contact since the infected reaper incident, and Rekha hadn't asked, wouldn't. Distrust lingered in Venjie's flinches and sidelong glances.

"I'll get water." She pulled her hands free and went for the filter. She felt the heated gaze on her back the whole time, and it was there when she turned around.

A tiny smile lifted Alandris' features as she accepted the water.

"No point standing around anymore." Rekha announced and turned to leave.

"Rekha!"

She kept moving until a hand grabbed her arm.

"Rekha."

She waited.

There came a sigh when she refused to turn around. Venjie moved to be in front of her, to forcefully meet her gaze. "Rekha. We aren't giving up."

"I didn't say you were."

Amber eyes narrowed at her clipped attitude. They closed briefly. "Rekha, just be careful. Give us hourly updates."

"If I can. You know the comms will probably get scrambled by, well, _everything_."

"Comms!" Venjie huffed. "Rekha, you dense creature! You're psionic!"

"And I'll contact Alandris when radios fail."

"She can barely get two words out without coughing up a lung!" Venjie gestured dramatically.

That was true.

"Are you really expecting her to be the only one you can contact?"

It was her only option. She'd been told to stay out of Venjie's head. Repeatedly. She waited for more, her gaze hard and unwavering.

Lips parted, Venjie's jaw sank. "Oh." Her eyes lowered.

Rekha waited another long moment. "Is that all, Remus?"

Immediately, Venjie's eyes shot up, bright and full of challenge. "No, dammit!"

Irritation grated. "Then what? I don't have the time to waste while you sort out whatever is in your head, _Remus_."

"Red gods, Rekha." Liquid sparkled in those heated amber eyes. It made Rekha's insides clench. "You're still waiting for me to give you permission, aren't you?"

Silently, she waited.

"You may," Venjie swallowed. "You may use a psi-channel to contact me. At any time." She looked up, back down. A tear escaped and raced down her face. She swiped it away. Another followed. "Any time, Rekha. I trust you. I don't think there's anyone more trustworthy than you."

Emotions seethed inside her chest. Now wasn't the time to figure them out. She dipped her head in acknowledgment of Venjie's gift. "Thank you."

She felt more than saw Alandris roll her eyes.

"I'll give hourly updates however is possible." Rekha said and made to move toward the moonpool.

"That's it?" Venjie's tone was crushed.

"Venjie, let it go" Alandris rasped. "Unless there's something else you want her to know."

"There is!"

Rekha paused, looked over her shoulder.

Venjie's jaw worked.

"Well?" Alandris pushed.

"What if we need to contact you!" spit out. Venjie blinked as though that wasn't what she'd meant to say. She pursed her lips.

Alandris wheezed. "Can we," gasp, "Contact you somehow?"

"Yes!" Venjie barked. "Yes," was repeated quieter. "There are a thousand reasons why we need reliable comms in a magmatic environment, let alone _this one_."

Rekha fully turned. She studied her friends for several long breaths. "Yes and no."

"What sort of answer is that?" grumbled Venjie.

"No. A non-augmented has no way to reach out unless a psionic first establishes connection. As for the yes," Rekha considered her next words. "It's a bit complicated and involves a good deal of energy. I don't think Alandris is strong enough to endure the connection."

"Then fine. Maintain it with me." Venjie ordered.

Rekha soldiered through her pounding heart to maintain her calm demeanor. "There's more."

Furrows gathered above Venjie's pretty eyes. "What else?"

"This kind of connection leaves a lasting impression. It's not exactly permanent, but records say it can last for months, sometimes longer." Rekha slipped into a lecturing tone. "Without discipline and training, strong thoughts and emotions will broadcast directly to the psionic. The more the connection is used, the stronger the bond, the more ease the psionic will have in psychic control."

"Control," came from Alandris.

"You said you couldn't control us." Venjie whispered.

Rekha swallowed her emotions. "I said that I could not make you think or believe anything. I could, however, temporarily wrest control of your body from you." She watched her friends' pupils blow wide, their pulse gallop at their throats, their knuckles tighten. "It would not be pleasant, especially if the attack came through a dry connection."

She continued calmly. "The more the victim struggles, the more painful it would be. A protected and trained mind like Alandris' could likely repel low class attacks. She would struggle with middle classes. Winning or losing would be a toss up; either way she'd end up comatose for days or weeks and probably couldn't survive another mental attack. She would absolutely lose to an H-class, would lose some of her intellectual capacity, possibly some memory, and endure physical damage in the process. When control was given back, she would be scarred for life."

Their faces were stricken, horror and grief billowing in clouds of broadcast. Rekha didn't shut it out. She kept going. "A long-term connection would soften those defenses. Control could be taken more easily and less destructively."

"Have," Venjie panted. "Have you done this?"

Prisoners were kept for training young soldiers. A good many were old Martians and enemies of the state. About a third were Delhian natives, sent to prison for various transgressions from treason to murder. Touching those minds… She wasn't sure what was worse, fighting a broken-hearted Martian or a twisted sociopath. "An LTC? No."

"Taken control?" Alandris asked, calm and cold.

"Many times. It's standard in training exercises."

Venjie's frame coiled in preparation of sudden movement.

Rekha braced for the attack by closing her eyes.

Venjie was standing there, her body trembling, rage written in every quiver and line of her face.

Alandris wheezed into the tension, "I've heard that a psi attack leaves the soldier with impressions of their victim for a while. The longer the fight, the more is impressed."

Her lip trembled. It'd taken her months to stop having nightmares about their ghosts. Her emotions pushed into her throat, made her croak. "Yes."

The rage on Venjie shifted. "And they forced children into the minds of prisoners." She growled. "How can you stand here like some academy professor, talking about these horrors and atrocities you've committed, that you've _watched_, that you've," a gasping breath, "That's happened to _you_." She blinked. "Did trainees practice on each other?"

Sessions were highly regulated to prevent unnecessary brain damage, but, "Yes."

"And soldiers are trained young, aren't they? Before puberty sets in?"

"All psionics receive early training by qualified teachers." Like her parents. "Mandatory military training begins at fourteen." She'd been a year late.

"Gods!" Venjie fumed. "I'm going to slap that cold expression from your face!"

"Venjie," Alandris lifted a hand that Venjie ducked.

Rekha's eyes closed again, trying to shut out the hatred that her dumb mouth had managed to magnify in Venjie.

"When we get out of here, I'm going to lead an inquisition into Delhian child abuse and inhumane training practices!"

An eyelid lifted enough to see Venjie's face flushed, fists balled at her sides. One hand swept up. Rekha squeezed her eyes shut again.

The punch didn't come. Her eyes opened to see the hand moving slowly toward her face, fingers extended, palm up. The fingers touched her cheek, then the whole hand until it was cupping her face. The thumb stroked a gentle caress. She sniffled, and tears poured down her face.

"Oh, Rekha. You really are a soft one," breathed across her wet cheek. Venjie moved their bodies together, wrapped comforting arms around Rekha, clucked at Rekha's sudden clutching hold. "It's okay, sweetheart." Gentle hands stroked her back. "It's okay. I didn't mean to scare you."

Shudders wracked her body. She was crying again. Why was she always crying? Hadn't she done that enough on this planet already?

* * *

A/N - did someone say suffer? I've been waiting _so long_ to get to this chapter!


	18. The Mountain

"You're certain?" Rekha asked an hour later. She'd spent what felt like half a lifetime crying in Venjie's arms. When she'd come out of it, she'd escaped to the hygiene closet to splash her face and try to process. Ten minutes hadn't been long enough. Ten years probably wouldn't be either.

"Rekha. For the fourth time, yes." Venjie's brow was arched. "Do whatever you need to do. We have work to get on with, remember?"

Says the woman who didn't have to put an anchor in someone else's head for the first time.

_You're absolutely certain you want this?_ Rekha asked with psi this time, to drive her point home. _Aside from privacy issues, I've never done this. You really want me messing around in your head? I could make a mistake. I could hurt you._

Venjie flinched, then looked at Alandris' green-riddled features. "Rekha, you're wasting time doubting yourself. If you can get past cerebral shielding from _kilometers _away delicately enough not to hurt me, you can put an anchor in my head to let us communicate with the same finesse."

Alandris nodded, wiped snot from her nose.

Rekha's own sinuses pulsed with congestion. She had a headache. What if the infection ma-

"Rekha! Do it!"

_Very well._

That soft spot for killing, it was also where the anchor needed to be placed. She should have mentioned this. No. No more time for delaying and wondering. She'd committed. Do it. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and slid deeper into Venjie's mind. Carefully, gently, with absolute determination to not hurt Venjie, Rekha focused on the soft spot.

A trainer had explained that it felt different for each psionic. The anchor was unique to them. The trainer had imagined installing a comms unit in their target. Another liked the concept of leaving parrots. A former teammate had enjoyed the offensiveness of alarm sirens.

Rekha planted a saffron crocus. They didn't simply produce the famously expensive spice. The flowers were lovely. Maybe Rekha could buy a few bulbs and grow saffron herself once she got off this planet. She could find a job as ship chef on a luxury liner or something. She smiled at the little plant taking root in Venjie's mind and retreated.

Venjie's eyes flew open. "I feel it!"

The trainer had also said that each recipient felt the anchors differently. It was largely affected by the psionic who placed it there. Some said it was a hot needle winding and twisting its painful way through their mind. A heavy weight. A dull pulsing. A frightening presence. A strange waft of air. No one ever enjoyed it.

"It's…" Venjie struggled to describe.

Rekha looked at the scanner's readouts. The dragon seemed as far away as it was going to get.

"It's… smooth."

"Smooth?" rasped Alandris.

Venjie shrugged, darted a quick glance at Rekha that she pretended not to see. "I mean, it has a sweetness to it, like Rekha's voice. Out loud and," a gesture at her head. "In here. But there's a solidness to it too. And… it's smooth. Like silk, but it doesn't feel like a blanket. It's a small thing."

Venjie kept talking, trying to describe what she felt and with every spoken word there was a psi-echo that pulsed in Rekha's head. Tangled emotions layered heavily on her own. Her mind and heart filled until she felt ready to burst. Too much!

How? How to reduce all this broadcast? She couldn't stop or reduce it at the source; that would defeat the whole purpose of the anchor. Had to find a fix in her own head. Only hear direct thoughts! That's it. Only direct thoughts allowed. She imagined a valve between her mind and Venjie's. It only opened for direct thoughts.

Slowly, the emotions stopped layering. The words stopped echoing. Only her own remained.

_Rekha_?

"Sorry. It was… a lot. I… I had to reduce it."

_You can hear me?_

"Yes, Remus."

Alandris snorted. "Glad the anchor is working."

What? She opened her eyes.

_It's working, Rekha!_ Venjie's mouth wasn't moving. _You did it._

Light, that was strange to hear someone in her head when she wasn't the one holding open the psi-channel. It'd been so long since she'd been around other psionics. There was the old voice, of course, but this was someone she knew and cared about. It was different, warmer, better. Homesickness tried to worm its way up her throat. She shoved it down. Priorities. Find the cure.

"It'll be nice not to rely on the shoddy comms." Rekha allowed.

Alandris closed her eyes and shook her head. Her lips moved in an annoyed, but soundless mutter.

"I'm heading to the prawn. I'll try Path 'A' first." Path 'A', one of three plans they had come up with for Rekha getting to the mountain. 'A' was the most direct and went for the closest tunnel opening. As long as the dragon didn't show up, and she didn't fall into a lava lake, she'd get to the alien base in under an hour.

The moment she was alone, her mind gated back to those comforting moments in Venjie's embrace. Light, the woman had called her "sweetheart"! After everything Rekha had said about anchors, her abilities, and the monstrous things she'd done, Venjie had _hugged_ her, _comforted_ her, been angry _for her_. She'd said she thought Rekha was the most trustworthy person she knew.

A tickle in the back of her throat had her clearing it. The tickle laughed into a cough that took her hands off the prawn controls for fear of accidentally hitting the boosters and landing her in a lavapool.

Damn this disease! She didn't have time to waste coughing or mooning over how it'd been the pinnacle of wonderful being embraced by Venjie and hearing her say sweet things in her ear. Or wonder at how Venjie had described the anchor. She didn't hate it. It didn't hurt her. Was she lying? Or was it truly possible to create an anchor that didn't cause disruption? Was all of the pain and awfulness that her trainers had described avoidable? Did they know it and do it anyway?

Anger thrummed hot under her skin. They probably did know. They knew there were ways to be gentle and chose not to be. Damn the military's insistence on hating everyone! A delicate flower was as effective as a light-forsaken knife, but they preferred the knife.

Brittle rock sank under a heavy landing. "Too much boost, Sharma." She berated herself. "You're letting your emotions get in the way again."

Refocused, she hopped over a lavaflow, pushed away a shark. She was in an open plain of barely hardened lava. The brittle rock continued threatening to break under each step.

"Don't linger. Don't get distracted," became Rekha's mantra.

Great care was given to every step taken. Psi constantly reached out, feeling for dragons. She shuddered at the idea that there was more than one.

"Focus. You have a destination. You need to reach it in one piece." She was almost across the open field. The mountain loomed only a few scant meters away.

There was a rumble in the waters, a broadcast of territorial aggression. What? Where? From her right. The dragon. Caution now a luxury, she boosted the remaining distance to a tall spire. The mountain was covered in them, looking like the whole thing was a giant, dripping candle, turned upside down. Hopefully, they would give some cover.

The spire exploded. She yelped and hit the boosters again. A fireball smashed into the rocks behind her. A moment later, she punched them again, dodging laterally. For twenty minutes, she danced up the mountain while fireballs rained down on her. Rage broadcasted from the dragon. It wanted to destroy the metal fish. It _needed_ to destroy it. It was a threat, one that would find its eggs and hurt them.

Was it ancient enough to remember that? Was it a parent of the lost egg? Or was it something like genetic memory? She shuddered and dodged another fireball. Whatever the reason, the fact that the dragon could put cause and effect together meant it was intelligent. Getting back to the habitat was going to require stealth and patience. But first, she had to make it to the tunnel. It was only a few meters ahead.

Red lights screamed about the boosters needing to cycle down and recharge. The tunnel mouth was right there! She could make it! She hit the boosters again, but nothing happened. They'd automatically shut down. Five minutes to recharge. The dragon was circling back; she only had a minute. What to do?

The grappling hook. Instead of a drill attachment, one of the exosuit's arms ended in a three-pronged hook. She aimed up and fired. The hook shot toward the ledge above the tunnel, fell, and caught as the dragon was diving at her, arm outstretched, claws ready to crush her little prawn.

She hit retract. With a lurch, the prawn was yanked up. Below her, rock went flying, and the dragon howled in frustration. She released the hook, let the prawn slide down and run into the tunnel. More rock exploded, caused a cave-in, completely blocking the tunnel entrance.

Denied fury billowed in the water. More and more attacks caused more rocks to fall. Light, it could cause the whole mountain to collapse! Can't stop. Keep going. She pushed the prawn to its fastest pace, dodging falling rock, hopping over glowing lava, until she burst into a giant space dominated by a massive cubic structure. The precursor base.

Gargantuan cables stretched from mountain to cube, holding it aloft over a lake of bubbling lava. A few fish darted about. Nothing overly dangerous. She checked the boosters. One minute left.

_I'm inside the mountain_, she reported to Alandris.

_Inside_?! Venjie shot back. _Is there a_ _base_?

Venjie? What, oh, right, the anchor. _Yes._

_We can't read you on sensors_, came Alandris' addition.

_Alandris?_ Venjie gasped. _I can hear you too!_

Two voices in her head. She felt giddy. How long had it been since she'd felt a group?

_I expect that Rekha could have given us a three-way channel at any time. This isn't the time to discuss it. Rekha, we saw the dragon's sudden movement. Was it attacking you? Are you injured? Is the prawn damaged?_

_Yes. No. And… _she paused to check readouts. _No. Green to go. _

_I see a c- _

A warper stole her attention. It was a dozen meters away, facing her. Could it detect her sickness within the prawn? It started making a beeline in her direction before she finished the thought. Okay. Time to see how much work it was to fight a warper. She raised the grappling hook and readied the other arm.

_Rekha? _Venjie prodded.

_Warper. It's coming at me._

At least it was an easy target. The hook hit it dead in the chest, latched on, yanked it close enough for the other arm to attack. She swung the drill bit into its neck. Green goo spun into the water, and the warper shrieked and writhed. Its metal pincers swung wildly at the prawn. Plasteel sparked.

She reached into the robot with psi and started kicking at its mechanical organs. A warp field blurred behind it. She let go, and it darted backwards and vanished.

_I scared it off. Prawn is a little scratched, otherwise no damage._

_Red gods, wh-_

_Well done. _Alandris spoke over Venjie's concern. _Do you see an entrance to the facility?_

She peered around. Was that a green shimmer?

_Maybe. Checking._ She made sure boosters were ready and launched herself atop a cable. It didn't even register the prawn's weight. She walked down the massive cable until she could make out what appeared to be an entrance. Another boost got her to the lip. Looked like an energy field of some sort. A stasis field like the moonpool used?

She lifted an arm to it, and it slid through without a hitch. The rest of the prawn followed. Water dripped down the glass, and sensors registered a breathable atmosphere.

A metal crab scuttled by.

_I'm in._

_Take it slow._

_Be careful!_

There was a hallway leading in, tall and wide enough for the prawn. No need to get out. She did open the hatch for a little fresh air. And it was fresh. It didn't have the usual recycled metal aftertaste that habitat air did. Nice. No unusual sounds either. Metal crabs doing their thing and the general hum of electronics. Temp was pleasant as well, a little cool. Ambient temperature was several degrees below Alterran norms. Had the aliens liked it cold? Were their environmental systems more efficient than Alterran? Or was it that they had so much energy available that it didn't matter how much they burned to keep the habitat luxuriously cool?

Her path was lined with the usual harsh architecture, all straight lines and harsh edges, relieved by strange designs and backlit with green glow. A metal crab on the wall paused to assess her arrival, then moved on. The path gave her an option of going through an arch or continuing down ramps. She shrugged and went down.

_Path branched. I took the one going down._

_I wish I could be there too. _Venjie sighed. _What are you seeing?_

_Same kind of thing we've seen before. Tall, ornate walls. Green lighting. Mechanical crabs. Long h- whoa._ Rekha stopped the prawn. There was an archway, protected by a forcefield, a dozen meters ahead.

_What?_

_There's a forcefield. _She drew closer. Something moved beside her. She readied herself to defend or run. From the floor, a pedestal rose. On it was a green, glowing cube.

_A what? _Venjie asked.

Had she said that aloud? _A green cube appeared. I'm going to scan it. _She used psi to get the scanner hovering in front of the cube. Results would take a couple minutes. She tried to forward them to her crew. No signal. She read off what she had and went to the archway. Beside it was a large pedestal, just like the one in front of the island base, and like Venjie had described, a panel opened, revealing the shape of a tablet.

_It's like you said about the island base. This needs a tablet._

_We can fab one. _Venjie said excitedly.

_What? How?_

_The green cube, it's an energy source. An ultra dense energy source. I think the fabricator can use part of it to create a tablet. The leftover can be converted to a battery to fit our tools. It'll last ten times as long, longer maybe!_

An ultra dense energy source. She eyed the cube. _Is it safe to touch?_

_As safe as anything else we've found._

How reassuring. She glanced at movement, immediately dismissed the crab doing something inside a wall panel. The prawn hand closed around the cube. She didn't drop dead, the prawn didn't explode, and the alien base seemed unchanged. Shrugging, she dropped the cube in storage and turned to continue exploring.

There was a blip in her HUD. Readouts were green. What flas-

Hull status flashed. A half percent drop in integrity. What? Why was the hull integrity dropping? Another half percent was shaved off the reading. She leaned forward, peering about, saw a glint of movement. One of those metal crabs? Its front leg slashed at the prawn, and another half percentile was lost.

She picked it up with psi. "Look, you, I've got a disease to cure, and your ion cubes are going to help with that. You know, the problem _your creators_ couldn't fix?"

Little legs scrabbled in the air.

"I'd appreciate it if you tell your friends to leave me alone."

The lights atop its head waved.

She dropped it, sighed when it immediately returned to its futile attack on the prawn's leg. Psi tossed it down the hall. "I don't have time for this."

_The metal crabs aren't happy I took the cube._ She reported.

_Are you in danger?_ Alandris asked.

_From the crabs? No. Not unless they swarm me. With thousands._

_Understood. Still. Take extra care in case something else in there decides it wants the cube back._

_Aye._

Sensors didn't show any change in atmosphere. Psi didn't feel anything off. A few more crabs came for flying lessons, but otherwise, Rekha went unmolested through the rest of the base. There wasn't much to it. Another entrance slash exit on a higher level and another field-protected door. Something blue glowed from the other side. She squinted, trying to make it out, yet the field's disruption didn't yield. There was a workstation that she downloaded as much data from as she could. PDA might finish translating by the time she got back to the hab.

_Think I've found everything I can. Heading back._

_Understood._

Glow more intense than the wall lighting caught her eye, and she noticed a hallway she hadn't gone down before. It went down a few meters and opened up a bit, with what appeared to be a stack of ion cubes along the wall. Scanner confirmed. It was a mound of them. Why? Why a stack here? She frowned at her surroundings, noticed that the hallway she was in led into a large, empty room. Mostly empty. There was what appeared to be a pedestal in the middle of the chamber and a strange arch-like structure on the far end. It looked like the arch on the alien base island. From the hallway, she sent the scanner in, didn't learn anything new.

_I found something else._

There was an excited noise from Venjie. _What? Gods, I wish I was there to see!_

_A stack of ion cubes outside an empty room. There's nothing to explain its purpose, just a pedestal and arch like on the island by the other base._

_An arch? Similar or _exactly _the same?_ Her excitement was sharp, cutting almost.

What was she getting at? _I can't be certain. I'll send you the scans to compare._ No signal dinged at her. _The rock must be jamming the signal. You'll have to wait._

Venjie muttered under her proverbial breath. _Wait, you said 'a stack of ion cubes'. Can you retrieve them?_

She tried, but couldn't take a single cube. _It's not coming loose._ She prodded with psi, didn't feel seams or space between the cubes. When she tried to lift it, it felt like trying to move a prawn suit. _I think it's a single body._

_A single body?_ Alanris put in. _Could the precursors have grown these things like bacteria in a lab?_

_It would lend credence to the hypothesis that this base is here to collect thermal energy. _Venjie said.

If so, then they were condensing thermal energy into these structures. And basic logic said that if these were readily available, not hidden behind forcefields, then they were safe enough for anyone to access. Safe and easy to break down. Rekha struck the pile with an arm. Fractures appeared along the structure in perpendicular lines. Sensors didn't indicate an energy buildup or radiation leakage. A couple more strikes resulted in two perfect cubes tumbling from the structure to the floor. Only the crabs seemed upset. Several more strikes broke the entire thing into a jumble of perfect cubes.

Rekha found half a grin tilting her mouth. _I harvested more cubes._

_What? How?_

_Easily enough. A few light taps shattered the thing into a bunch of little cubes. They obviously designed it for ease of access. I'll bring those too._

There was muttering about recklessness that she ignored. More crabs -the same crabs?- got flying lessons as she headed toward the exit. Several warpers were waiting outside. Right outside. Rekha threw a crab at one. An arm scythe casually split the thing in half.

Okay. She aimed the grappling arm, caught a warper, and dragged it inside. It flopped to the floor where she used a foot to hold it down. The grappling arm caught one scythe and ripped it from the body. Horrible screeching filled the corridor. She grit her teeth and used the scythe to hack at the rest of the body until the screeching stopped.

She aimed the hook at the second warper. A phasegate opened, and it fled. Were these things learning? She took out one, so two waited to attack? Would there be an armada the next time they attacked?

That could be tomorrow or in ten minutes. "Get a move on, Sharma." She only tarried long enough to collect the warper's remains and shove them in storage. _Exiting the base._

_Understood._ Venjie's tone was sharp. She was angry again. Of course she was.

The tickle in the back of her throat threatened to turn into coughing, made her pause again to drink water. Would the dragon be waiting? Was the tunnel a collapsed mess? Twenty minutes later, she had her answer. The tunnel ahead was choked with fallen rock. Dammit.

_The mountain tunnel I came in is collapsed. I'm going to look for another exit._

Venjie suggested directions for one of the other possible tunnels. Rekha consulted her own copy of the map and agreed.

She clunked out of the tunnel, hopped and grappled her way around the edges of the bubbling lava pool. She was nearing what looked like a cave when four warpers gated in front of her. They sped at her.

No time to think, only react. She released the grapple, hit the boosters, shot the hook toward the cave. As it was reeling her in, she used psi to get a scythe out and attack the warper that reacted the fastest. It dodged, but gave her enough time to get inside the cave. The entrance was barely large enough for the prawn. Perfect for a defense position. The warpers could only come at her one at a time.

She decimated one quickly enough. She aimed for the next, but it dodged at the last moment, and the grappling hook sped past. Before she could recall it, a scythe flashed and cut the plasteel cable. Another warper charged her. Psi wrapped the cable around an arm, and slashed at the torso with its stolen scythe.

The third warper squeezed past its prone friend. There was a deep score across the prawn's glass and warning alarms screaming before psi could drop the rope and scythe to push the warper away. Scythes cut angrily through the waters. Pain lanced through Rekha's skull. Sweat poured down her face, got into her mouth, filled it with the taste of iron.

Wait. What? She wiped at her face. Blood was smeared across her hand. Psi overload already? Must be the Kharaa's influence. Dammit!

She slammed the prawn into motion, picking up the dropped scythe with prawn hand, and making the rotors howl as she forced the scythe into the warper's chest. The thing spasmed and went still. She yanked it out and screamed at the two remaining. Warp gates appeared. They retreated.

She wanted to collapse and rest. Instead, she exchanged the prawn's broken grappling arm for a drill arm and dove into the tunnel. It twisted and looped, made her scream in frustration that devolved into coughing, but eventually let out near the base of the mountain. Open lava fields greeted her. No warpers. Did this mean they weren't smart enough to extrapolate her path? Or had they deemed her too dangerous? She hoped for the latter and looked for the dragon.

_Rekha? Have you found another exit? _Venjie asked.

The dragon was sitting by the first tunnel, waiting. _I did. The dragon is still by the other one. I'm going to take a different path home. We can't risk it following me._ She expanded the map. The three different paths they'd marked glowed in differing colors.

_Be careful._

_That's the plan._

She wiped sweat and blood from her face and studied her options, eventually chose Path 'C', a path that was directly opposite the dragon. There seemed to be more lava rock formations that way. Hopefully it would be enough cover to get to the edges where pillars, shelves, and alcoves gave real cover. She relayed her decision, grit her teeth, and started moving.

* * *

A/N - Happy Womens History month!


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